


Keyframe

by quintaessentia



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, Canon - Book, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Canon - Movie, Culture Shock, I haven't decided if this is a fix-it or canon compliant yet, Jewish Original Character, Judaism, Language Barrier, Modern Character in Middle Earth, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Not a Mary Sue, Original Character-centric, Other, Quarantine Baby, Sapphic Original Character, Sort Of, Spoilers for The Hobbit, Thorin Is an Idiot, adhd original character, and kind of an asshole, because I said so, bilbo baggins has adhd, but either way, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quintaessentia/pseuds/quintaessentia
Summary: Leah Becker issupposedto be spending a month with her grandmother in England, before she'ssupposedto return to the States to finish up her Bachelor's in biology.But, like most things in life, nothing goes as planned. Leah goes on a hike Wednesday afternoon, promising her grandmother that she'll be home before sundown. Thursday morning, she’s discovered passed out in Bilbo Baggins' strawberry patch with no memories of who she is or how she got there.The year? TA 2940, a year before Bilbo Baggins is supposed to set out on the ill-fated Quest for Erebor with a band of thirteen cantankerous dwarves. Not that Leah understands the significance of the date. Not yet, anyways.Not abandoned, I just need to get my shit together in terms of school.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 66





	1. Good Morning

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: As we get into the portions where I go into detail about Judaic practices, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I am not Jewish. I was raised around a lot of Jewish traditions, yes, but ultimately I am a gentile and do not have the knowledge or ability to portray Judaism that Jewish people do. If my representation of Jewish people or Judaism is in any way disrespectful, offensive, or even simply misinformed, I sincerely apologize. I will take any criticism from Jewish people about my portrayal of their religion without argument or complaint and do the utmost that I can to address and amend the problem.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Big Folk stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and Bilbo shifted uncomfortably under her gaze before she turned to the window to look at the purple twilight that hung over Hobbiton. “Morning,” she repeated, faintly amused as she quirked an eyebrow at the flustered hobbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MGiME is such a terrible trope if done incorrectly *gestures vaguely at that one Mary Sue fanfiction we've all written, don't lie, I know you have* but holy flying _fuck_ it's so good if you do it right. So here I am, trying desperately to do it right. If you're mean to me I will cry. If it's warranted I will still cry but you have a free pass to be mean and are legally allowed to sell my tears on the black market to whoever buys the tears of teenage fanfiction writers on the black market.

For hobbits, there has always been some measure of predictability in their lives. Ever since the very first hobbits settled down in the valley of the Anduin River, they have had their routines and traditions, and they have changed very little over the years. As a general rule, hobbits enjoy the security of this day-to-day sameness. (Of course, there is always the odd hobbit out, usually a Took — mighty odd hobbits, those Tooks.)

Now, Bilbo Baggins of Bag End had always counted himself among the number of the normal hobbits. Although he was half Took by way of his mother, the indomitable Belladonna Took, he preferred to think that he took after his father, the much more reserved Bungo Baggins. He was a perfectly respectable gentlehobbit who enjoyed his perfectly respectable sedentary life, thank you very much, and he had no use for the adventure that his mother’s side of the family was so prone to. At the age of 49, he had fully settled into an respectably adventureless life, wholly devoid of any unanticipated occurrences.

So when he opened the front door of his hobbit hole one Thursday morning shortly before elevenses, planning to take a walk about Hobbiton, only to find one of the Big Folk laying face-down in his garden, front gate still locked, it was quite the surprise. _This is new_ , is what he thought, but what he said was merely, “Good morning!”

The Big Folk didn’t answer. She lay there, unmoving among his strawberry plants, and Bilbo Baggins of Bag End stared at her, cup of tea in hand, completely and utterly unsure of how to proceed. “Good morning!” he repeated, louder this time, as if he might get a different response the second time around through an increase in volume.

He did not. The Big Folk continued to lay there, and for a brief moment Bilbo considered closing his door and hoping that she would wake and be on her way by the time he next opened it. He frowned a little at himself, and shook his head. He couldn’t just leave her there.

Bilbo sighed as he set his cup of tea down on a little table near the door. He straightened his waistcoat, and cracked his knuckles in preparation for the task he was about to undertake. Hobbits are, as a general rule, wide around their middles from (much) more food than physical activity, and Bilbo was no exception to this.

He managed to flip her on her back, wincing at the sight of his flattened strawberry plants, and grab her underneath her arms so as to maneuver her out of his now rather squashed berries and onto the path. He groaned at the pull in his little-used muscles and paused to catch his breath. _I really should get more exercise_ , he thought, before brushing the notion aside like a particularly bothersome fly. Preposterous. Hobbits, and respectable hobbits especially, were not athletic by any stretch of the imagination. Respectable hobbits liked their cozy hobbit holes and seven square meals a day and so did Bilbo. Not that he was anything other than a respectable hobbit, of course.

He summoned all of his admittedly meager strength to drag the Big Folk through the doorway. Once she was fully over the threshold, he set her down as gently as he could manage (which was not very gently, to tell the truth, but in any case she did not wake from the jolt of being dropped) and sagged against the wall with one hand pressed to his heaving chest.

As soon as he had regained his breath, he pushed the Big Folk’s legs out of the way so he could close the front door. Hands on his hips, he observed his unconscious guest. She had strong features, with high cheekbones and a slightly hooked nose. Her hair was secured in untidy twin braids that framed her face, flyaway hair slicked to her forehead from perspiration. The deep brown of her hair provided a stark contrast to her fair, though freckled, complexion. Even in her disheveled state, she exuded an aura of serenity, although Bilbo supposed that it could have just been the fact that she was asleep. She was clad in baggy trousers with pockets up and down the sides, a hooded burgundy tunic, and heavy-duty leather boots, with a kind of small canvas knapsack on her back.

It was unusual attire by hobbit standards, and though his dealings with Big Folk were few and far between, he was fairly certain that their women did not commonly dress in such a manner. Returning to the matter at hand, he tucked that thought away in the back of his mind, and wondered what, exactly, he was going to do with her.

He couldn’t very well leave her in the entryway, however much as his stomach wanted to get to elevenses, but at the same time he didn’t know if he had the strength or the stamina to drag her much farther than he already had. The closest room was the parlor, but he had a feeling that she wouldn’t be waking up for quite some time, and would need a proper bed to rest in. He decided on the guest room, and straightened his waistcoat before picking her up once more.

And so Bilbo Baggins of Bag End found himself heaving a Big Folk into the bed in his spare room. He’d had the foresight to remove her boots and canvas bag, at least, but it was an arduous task nonetheless. Caught up in the self-satisfaction of having found a place to keep her, he had forgotten to account for the fact that she was larger than any hobbit. In the end, he resigned himself to the fact that her feet would simply have to stick out over the end of the bed, and he left her alone to fetch his elevenses.

Now, Bilbo Baggins was an exceptionally clever hobbit, and he enjoyed passing his time with puzzles and riddles and other games to keep his mind sharp. An unusual hobby, but a respectable one nonetheless. This Big Folk he had found in his berry patch was, perhaps, one of the most intriguing puzzles he had encountered to date, and he was eager to figure her out. As he grabbed a tin of biscuits from the pantry, he tried to put the pieces together.

The first possibility was, of course, that she had wandered into Hobbiton and fallen asleep in his garden. But that was very unlikely, he told himself as he sat down at his dining room table. The gate had been locked behind her, after all, and unless she had taken the time to close the latch before keeling over in his strawberries, he didn’t see how that was plausible. No, there just wasn’t any explanation as to how she could’ve gotten there on her own.

Then came the notion that someone could have walked through Hobbiton unnoticed, with an unconscious Big Folk in tow, and then deposited her in Bilbo’s garden before politely closing the latch on their way out. If Bilbo was being honest, that idea sounded even more ridiculous than the first.

He hummed a little as he bit into a biscuit, mulling over the possible sequences of events that could have brought that Big Folk to his garden. As he polished off the biscuit, he realized that he had forgotten to get himself some tea. He hurried to the kitchen to fill his tea kettle and paused, recalling something. He set the empty kettle on the counter, and made his way to the entry chamber. Sure enough, on a little table beside the door, sat his forgotten cup of chamomile.

He took a sip of the now-lukewarm tea, grimacing at the unpleasantness of the temperature. Mentally he kicked himself for his absentmindedness as he took the tea cup back to the dining room, where his biscuits were waiting for him. Usually he was much better about remembering things. Yes, he did occasionally lose papers and quill pens that never resurfaced, and he was prone to forgetting appointments that he didn’t write down (and even some that he did, if his appointment book was out of sight), but a sense of routine had kept his forgetful tendencies at bay for the most part.

It must have been the Big Folk, he decided, reluctantly sipping his tea as he settled back into his chair. Her arrival, so to speak, had thrown off his routine. There was no point in trying to stick to one now that his morning had been disrupted. He downed the last of his tea, and ate another biscuit as he wondered what he could do in a schedule-less day. The idea was almost unfathomable to Bilbo, who relied heavily on his routines to get almost everything done. It was terrifying, yes, but also freeing at the same time.

Whatever he did, he would have to make sure he could be nearby in case the Big Folk woke up. She would be frightened, certainly, at the unfamiliar surroundings. Frightened people sometimes lashed out, he reflected as he munched on a third biscuit, and lashing out could mean breaking things.

Bilbo’s things.

His eyes widened almost comically and he finished off his biscuit hastily. Bilbo hurried down the hall to the spare room to make sure that the Big Folk was still asleep, and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the steady rising and falling of her chest.

Nevertheless, he decided that he wanted to be there when the Big Folk would eventually awaken to prevent any potential breakage of possessions. So he settled into the rocking chair with a musty (and, in all probability, long outdated) book on the habits and customs of menfolk, prepared to wait.

By the time afternoon tea had rolled around, the Big Folk was still asleep, and Bilbo was getting concerned on her behalf. 3 o’clock in the afternoon seemed far too late for any healthy person, Big Folk or otherwise, to remain asleep. He had, of course, checked her for the obvious signs of illness — her temperature felt reasonable to Bilbo, she seemed to have a healthy tinge to her face, being neither sallow nor overly flushed, and her breathing was steady, just as it had been since he had first found her.

His eyes drifted, not for the first time, to the canvas bag that he had propped against her boots near the foot of the bed. He had, thus far, abstained from looking through the contents, telling himself that he needed to respect her privacy. Now, however, he was starting to reconsider. What if there was something in there that could help wake the Big Folk up? If that was indeed the case, he would be remiss _not_ to search, especially since the thought had occurred to him.

Bilbo sighed as he stood to grab the bag, and promised himself that it would only be a quick peek, and that he would put everything back as soon as it became clear that none of the contents would be of any use. Before he could change his mind yet again, he unbuckled the strap and opened the flap.

The contents of the bag proved just as puzzling as the person it had arrived with. There was a book, two flexible bars wrapped in an oddly shiny, bright-colored material, and another bag with what appeared to be basic first aid supplies, mostly for bandaging wounds. The alphabet used to mark the items was similar to the one used for Westron, but the language appeared to be unlike any he was familiar with. What on Middle Earth was a ‘granola?’

Deciding that none of the contents of the knapsack would prove useful in waking up the Big Folk, Bilbo repacked the items and replaced the bag. Then, he settled back in the rocking chair, twiddling his thumbs as he tried to puzzle out her origins. If anything, her possessions had only muddied the metaphorical waters, and Bilbo could feel a headache coming on.

Near suppertime, the Big Folk sat up blearily and said something that Bilbo didn’t understand in the slightest. He looked up from the almanac he had been perusing, startled, and could think of nothing to say, except for, “Good morning!”

The Big Folk stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and Bilbo shifted uncomfortably under her gaze before she turned to the window to look at the purple twilight that hung over Hobbiton. “Morning,” she repeated, faintly amused as she quirked an eyebrow at the flustered hobbit.

Her Westron was heavily accented, and she spoke slowly, as if unused to the feeling of the words on her tongue. Bilbo brought a hand up to his face, embarrassed. “What I mean to say-”

He was cut off by the Big Folk. “Good morning,” she said cheerily back, and he got the distinct feeling that she was poking fun at him, lighthearted though it may have been.

But Bilbo Baggins of Bag End smiled at the Big Folk he had found face-down in his strawberry patch that morning, and wondered — not for the last time — exactly what he had gotten himself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo Baggins has ADHD because I said so. Also because I really don't know how to write neurotypical characters. Tell me your secrets, please. Or don't, that's cool too, I'm perfectly okay with headcanoning every character as neurodivergent.


	2. Don't You (Forget About Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There should’ve been something more there for her to tell him. She searched for something else to say. Anything else. Her age, her last name. Her family’s names, their faces, even. Her passions, her hobbies, her goals and aspirations. Where she was born, where she grew up, where she lived. What she had been doing before she ended up here, in Bag End.
> 
> There was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stayed up until like 3 A.M. planning out the rest of this fic and can I just say ouch. My brain hurts so much, but I work through the exhaustion like a good little hyperfocused child, so here's another chapter in less than 24 hours.
> 
> Chapter title taken from [this iconic song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A)

Leah sluggishly took in her surroundings as she shook the last bits of sleep from the corners of her mind. She was in a small bed — a very, very small bed, almost as if it had been meant for a child — and her feet were hanging uncomfortably over the edge. And her ankles were sore. Very, very sore.

The room was sparsely furnished, the only furniture other than the bed she was currently laying on being a small dresser and a rocking chair, the latter of which was occupied by a diminutive figure. In the dim light of what she could only assume to be evening, she could just make out the small person in the rocking chair. He was small, probably around 4 feet tall, and he was absorbed in a book of some sort. He squinted to make out the words on the page in the dying daylight, mouthing silently as he ran his finger slowly down the page.

He had curly brown hair, much lighter than her own, and peeking out from underneath the mop were his pointed ears. He had on a baggy white shirt and brown trousers with suspenders that ended right above his very woolly feet.

Pointed ears. Woolly feet. That was … unusual.

Or was it? Part of her wanted to say that it was, but another part of her told her that there was something achingly familiar about all of it, and Leah had no idea which side she should listen to. Her head hurt.

She propped herself up on an arm. “Hey, uh, what’s going on here?"

He froze, finger halfway down the page, and locked eyes with her, clearly startled. _Deer in the headlights_ , she thought, although she had no idea where that analogy came from or what it meant, exactly.

He faltered for a second, searching for something to say and coming up empty. And then: “Good morning!”

Leah stared at him, eyes wide. She had no idea what language that was, but she definitely shouldn’t have been able to understand it. Somewhere in the foggy haze of her mind, she knew that she spoke two languages, although she couldn’t remember for the life of her what they were called, and she was pretty sure that was neither of them. Frowning lightly, she sat up and pulled herself into a cross-legged position as she turned her head gingerly towards the window to look at the sunset. “Morning,” she tried dubiously, the unfamiliar word thick and heavy on her tongue.

She turned her head back and raised an eyebrow at the little person, who squirmed uncomfortably underneath her gaze. He flushed, embarrassed, and tried to hide behind his hands. “What I mean to say-”

Leah interrupted his explanation, smiling brightly. “Good morning!” she said, overly chipper, and she saw a few emotions flash across his face — exasperation? amusement? — before he smiled back at her. 

He closed his book and placed it on the dresser as he stood. “My name,” he said, “is Bilbo Baggins. You’re inside my smile, Bag End, in Hobbiton. The Shire.”

Leah looked at him blankly. Those names meant nothing to her, but she could feel an itch in her mind where the knowledge should’ve been. They were important, at least, she knew that. He picked up on her confusion, and his tone softened considerably. “What’s your name? Where do you come from?”

“Leah,” she said, and frowned.

There should’ve been something more there for her to tell him. She searched for something else to say. Anything else. Her age, her last name. Her family’s names, their faces, even. Her passions, her hobbies, her goals and aspirations. Where she was born, where she grew up, where she lived. What she had been doing before she ended up here, in Bag End.

There was nothing. Her lip quivered. “I don’t- I don’t remember anything.”

“Oh,” said Bilbo Baggins. “I see.”

Leah hugged her knees to her chest, and Bilbo sat on the bed next to her. “Why don’t I remember anything?” she asked, talking more to herself than anything else as she slipped into a different language.

Maybe it was English. That felt right. English.

Bilbo frowned from beside her. “I’m afraid I don’t understand whatever language you’re speaking. I only know Westron. Well, I do speak a bit of Sindarin and Quenya, but my knowledge is mostly academic in that area.”

Westron. Sindarin. Quenya. Again, Leah couldn’t escape the feeling that those words should’ve meant something to her, something more than the empty blank nothing of her memory where they were concerned. Where anything was concerned. “Sorry,” she said, returning to Westron. “I don’t- I don’t understand. Why can’t I remember anything?”

Bilbo, not really having an answer for that, was quiet. Leah squeezed her eyes shut and hugged her knees tighter to her chest, trying to push past the smooth emptiness that sat in the place of her memories. Her head throbbed with pain, and she could feel the familiar — were they familiar? — pinpricks at the corners of her eyes. She was about to cry in front of a complete and total stranger.

But was Bilbo Baggins of Bag End really a stranger? After all, she knew more about him than she did herself. She knew his name, and where he lived. She couldn’t even remember her own last name, or her favorite color, or what her parents looked like. If she even had parents, that was. It was pathetic how little she knew about herself.

The first few tears fell, silently, and then she was sobbing into her knees. By that time, Bilbo was completely and utterly out of his depth, but he tentatively brought a hand up to pat Leah’s shoulder awkwardly. He was unsure what comfort he could offer, but he tried to be reassuring with his words as he sat with her until her sobs subsided into sniffles.

Once she was calm once more, or at least as calm as anybody could hope to be in her situation, Bilbo stood from the bed. “Why don’t we go get something to eat?” he suggested, thumbs tucked into his suspenders.

She nodded as she wiped the last few stray tears from her face with the heel of her hand, and stood to follow him out of the bedroom. She had to duck a little in the doorway, but the ceiling in the hallway allowed her almost a foot of headroom.

His house — a _smial_ , he had called it — was a cozy, comfortable place, cluttered though it may have been. On the way through the hall, he stopped to adjust various piles of odds and ends to make them look more presentable, and it was obvious to Leah that he had not been prepared to have any sort of visitor. It felt wrong, somehow, intruding on the disarray of his personal life, and she pulled the sleeves of her shirt down over her palms uncomfortably as she entered the dining room.

There was a tin of biscuits open on the table, and he pushed it towards her as she took a seat. “Have some, if you’d like. I’ll go fetch some proper supper for the two of us.”

With that, he left Leah alone, and she looked around the room as she nibbled on a biscuit. It was just as cozy and comfortable as the rest of his home, but there was something about it that pushed at the back of her memory. For a moment, she almost swore she could hear the clanging of dishes and silverware to a jaunty fiddle tune. “Smash the bottles,” she mumbled in English before absentmindedly taking a bite of her biscuit.

But the little piece of memory was gone almost as soon as it had come, and she exhaled as she finished the biscuit. She drummed her fingers on the table as she looked around the smial. There was a part of her that was fighting desperately against the nothingness where her memories were supposed to be, fighting desperately to remember something about this place. What could it be? Bilbo had clearly never seen her before. How did she know this place so well?

She was pulled out of her musings when Bilbo re-entered with two plates of piping hot chicken, accompanied by bread and cheese. She offered him a small smile as she stood to take her plate. “Thank you,” she told him in English.

At his puzzled expression, she switched back to Westron. “Thank you, I mean.”

With an understanding nod, he returned her smile. “You’re welcome.”

They sat to eat, and Bilbo stared at his plate with pursed lips, fork and knife in hand, as if he was trying to remember something. “Ah, yes,” he said, setting down his cutlery as he hurried out of the room.

He returned with two cups of tea, still steaming, and placed one in front of her. “I wasn’t sure what you drank, so I made an extra cup of rosehip tea.”

Leah took the cup with a grateful smile and sipped at the hot liquid. They ate silently, neither knowing exactly what to say. Finally, Leah broke the silence. “How did I get in here?” she asked tentatively.

Bilbo wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I found you in my garden this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Face down. Right in the middle of my strawberries, too,” he informed her, almost conspiratorially.

Leah had to stifle a laugh at the image. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying (and failing) to conceal her smile.

“Quite the shock, it was, to find one of the Big Folk laying unconscious in my berry patch.”

Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “I’m sure it was.”

In retrospect, he had to admit that it was quite humorous, even though he hadn’t felt that way at the time, and he nodded as he tucked back into his food. Leah shook her head with a smile as she did the same. By the time they had finished their dinner — Leah insisting on cleaning up, saying that it was only proper for her to help out if she was going to be taking advantage of his hospitality — Bilbo Baggins had made a decision. She obviously had nowhere else to go — nowhere else that she could remember, at least, which amounted to the same thing.

For the time being, she would stay with him in Bag End. She would stay until her memories returned, at least, and if it turned out she still had no place to go, Bilbo would gladly continue to provide her a roof over her head and a place to sleep. He could use the company, and he certainly had the room for her, Bag End being one of the roomier smials in Hobbiton. Never let it be said that Bilbo Baggins would turn away a person in need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick question, before y'all go: I'm thinking about making Leah play an instrument. It wouldn't be a big plot thing, just a little fun hobby to maybe aid in character development. Should I? If so, what instrument? I'm thinking something classical, so it's not too much of a cultural dissonance thing, but honestly it would be hilarious if she put together a rudimentary drum kit. Let me know what y'all think, I'm terrible at making decisions.


	3. Who Knows Where This Road May Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was something important, she was sure of it. She frowned as she made her way to the dining room and stood by the table. Something was taking on shape through the haze that held her memories back, and as Bilbo entered with their dinners, she furrowed her brow. “Bilbo,” she asked slowly as he set the plates on the table, “do you have any candles?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters in slightly less than 24 hours. How d'you like them apples? Seriously though, I'm exhausted as all hell, so maybe don't expect another chapter for another week or two.
> 
>  _Home, love, family,  
>  I will never be complete until I find you  
> One step at a time; one hope, then another,  
> Who knows where this road may go  
> Back to who I was, on to find my future  
> Things my heart still needs to know_  
> — ["Journey to the Past" (Anastasia)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cd7s2ujr3c)  
> 

After polishing off his second breakfast, Bilbo went to tend to his garden. Leah followed him. There were bags under her eyes and she looked even more disheveled than she had the previous day, yawning as she laced up her brown leather boots.

“No. Absolutely not,” Bilbo told her, standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips. “You clearly did not get enough sleep last night, and I’ll not have my guest do my work for me when they’re this exhausted.”

Leah had, in fact, not gotten nearly enough sleep that night. The bed, while comfortable enough, was far too small for her. She had spent almost half the night tossing and turning, trying to find a position where she could avoid both being cramped and hanging off of the bed. Finally, she had given up, and made a rudimentary nest of blankets and pillows on the hardwood floor of the smial. It had taken another hour or so after that until she drifted off into a fitful sleep, chased by faceless figures through a forest of invisible trees.

But she gave her laces a final resolute tug and stood. She crossed her arms, stubbornly refusing to back down. “I broke your berry patch. It’s only fair that I help with your garden.”

“You didn’t- you didn’t _break_ my berry patch, exactly. You more … squashed it,” he tried.

Leah raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “If you don’t want to step aside and let me pass, I can always pick you up and relocate you,” she suggested with a wry smile.

Bilbo scoffed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

There was a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Wouldn’t I?”

She moved towards him, arms outstretched as if to grab him, and Bilbo jumped back with a yelp. “Fine, fine, you may assist.”

Leah smiled triumphantly as she stepped over the threshold of Bag End, and then she was outside for the first time that she could remember. She took a deep breath in and looked around in wonder. Smials lined the road (Bagshot Row, she faintly remembered Bilbo telling her) on either side, little doors and windows in the hillsides. For a moment, she felt the same sort of tug at her memory that she’d felt in the dining room of Bag End, but it fled as soon as she tried to close in on it.

With a frustrated sigh, she turned back to Bag End. “You live inside of a hill,” she noted as she closed the front door.

“Yes,” said Bilbo, “I do.” And before he could think better of it, he asked, “Do people not commonly live inside of hills where you’re from?”  
Leah turned towards him, a pained expression on her face as she fidgeted with one of the pockets on her trousers. “I don’t know.”

Bilbo mentally kicked himself. “I’m sorry, I should have known not to-”

Leah just waved him off as she squatted next to the strawberry plants with the misfortune to have served as her makeshift pillow the previous day. “I sure did a number on these little guys,” she muttered in English, brushing her hand over the broken stems.

Bilbo knelt next to her. “They should be fine. Most of them at least,” he said.

She hummed in agreement, deftly plucking out some stray weeds from between the little plants. There was a small, slightly squashed strawberry in the dirt. She picked it up and considered it for a moment, weighing her options before she brushed it off with her hands. Ignoring Bilbo’s small noise of alarm from beside her, she popped the berry directly into her mouth.

“You- you need to _wash_ it first, Leah! You can’t just eat it like that. It’s dirty!”

Leah smiled innocently at him as she wiped her hands on her trousers. “Do I? Do I really?” she asked. “Because I think I just ate it without washing it first.”

He spluttered. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

“I do plenty of things I’m not supposed to,” she replied, almost automatically.

Bilbo shook his head as he looked at her, clearly at a loss for words. Leah laughed as she patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “I’m not going to die from a single unwashed strawberry, Bilbo.”

He glared at her half-heartedly before conceding the point. “Alright. But don’t you go and make a habit of it,” he said as he moved to another patch of plants to pull out the weeds.

“No promises,” she joked good-naturedly, and even though their backs were to each other, she could almost see the eye roll he gave her.

As Leah pulled out weed after weed, something began to solidify in the fog of her mind. “I think,” she said, pausing mid-tug, “that I used to do this a lot.”

“Oh?” was all that Bilbo said as he continued to pull weeds.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I- I can’t remember any of the details, but I think I used to garden with someone.”

There was nothing Bilbo could think of to say to that, and Leah slowly returned to weeding. As they worked in silence, she tried to focus in on the hazy warmth of the memory, to recall anything specific about the garden that she had tended or whom she had tended it with, but it was to no avail. By the time Bilbo had declared that the garden was satisfactory and that it was time for lunch, all she knew was that she used to garden with someone she loved.

* * *

That afternoon, Bilbo knocked at the doorway of the spare room with a neatly rolled bundle of cloth in his arms. Leah looked up from where she sat on the bed inspecting the oddly-wrapped ‘granola’ from inside of her bag, legs crossed. “You need to bathe,” he said.

Leah sighed and put the ‘granola’ down next to her. “You are … probably right,” she said, uncrossing her legs and swinging them down over the side of the bed.

“And your clothes need to be washed.”

She looked down at her attire. The knees of her many-pocketed trousers were a slightly darker shade of gray than the rest of the pants, from kneeling in the garden to weed that morning, and there was a stain near the hem of her shirt from some butter that had been misplaced during breakfast. “You are, again, probably right.”

Bilbo held out the fabric, and she stood to take it from him. “It was my mother’s, in her youth," he said.

There was a heaviness to his voice that made Leah pause, her hand inches away from the tidy bundle. She swallowed. “Is she …”

Bilbo nodded with a sad, wistful smile. “Dead, yes. Take it,” he said, offering the cloth again when she continued to hesitate.

She took it gently. “Thank you.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I think she would have liked you, Leah.”

She smiled a little. “She would've?”

Bilbo nodded, but offered no elaboration. “You’ll use my washroom,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him through the smial. “I only hope that it isn’t too small for you, but you appear to be rather short for one of the Big Folk.”

She exhaled, and gripped the bundle of fabric to her chest, desperately wishing that she had something of her own mother to hold onto.

* * *

Leah rubbed the six-pointed silver star that hung around her neck between her forefinger and thumb before tucking it into the front of the dress she had donned. She supposed that, when worn by Bilbo’s mother, the skirt might have reached almost to the floor. On Leah, however, it only came a few inches below her knees.

It had taken her a good twenty minutes just to figure out in which order to put on the different components. The apron obviously went on last, but she had no idea which way to order the skirt and the blouse and the bodice. In the end, she had settled for sandwiching the skirt between the blouse and bodice, and hoping that the apron could cover up any glaringly obvious mistakes she had made in the fastening of the outfit.

The underwear was a different affair entirely. It was so unlike the fitted stretchy garment she had arrived in. All the extra circulation provided by the baggy bloomers left her feeling ridiculously exposed, despite the fact that she was wearing twice as many layers as she had been in her trousers.

Leah smoothed out her skirts with her hands. The person looking back at her in the washroom mirror was unfamiliar, to say the least, with the poofy sleeves of the blouse against the floral patterned bodice and plain, rose-colored apron. Not to mention that since Bilbo didn’t wear shoes (and she guessed that his mother hadn’t either), he hadn’t provided her with anything for her feet and she would either have to go barefoot or wear her shoes without socks. For now, she had opted for shoes without socks.

Unaccustomed to this attire though she was, she would have to get used to it, at least until she could wash her clothes. Leah exhaled and brushed a strand of damp hair out of her face before grabbing her laundry from where she had neatly stacked it on the countertop to find Bilbo.

He was in his study, poring over a stack of loose parchments. Leah couldn’t fully make out the script from the doorway where she stood, but the fluid, graceful lettering was familiar. She cleared her throat, and Bilbo gestured for her to wait as he finished reading the page.

When he had finished, he twisted around in his chair to face her. “Yes?” he asked.

She raised her laundry. “When can I wash these?”

He gestured vaguely. “Wash day isn’t until Monday. Just find somewhere to keep them until then, I suppose.”

She nodded, and he turned back to his papers. Just as she was about to make her way to her room, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Bilbo, what day is it today?”

“Friday,” he responded, not looking up from his reading.

She nodded again, frowning lightly as she took her laundry to her room and placed the dirty clothes in a haphazard stack atop the dresser. She took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. There was something about Fridays, something important that she couldn’t remember.

Leah raked her fingers through her damp hair, parting it in two. She hummed absentmindedly as she plaited her hair, looking out of the window at nothing in particular. When she tied off the second braid, she noticed with dismay that her braids were uneven. She contemplated just leaving them like that for a moment, but knew it would bug her until she fixed it, and so she unwound her hair with a frustrated groan.

Bilbo knocked on the doorframe just as she was halfway through her second braid, and she turned to him. “Dinnertime,” he said.

She nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Leah turned back to the window, finishing her braid as she watched the first red-orange light of sundown spill across the clouds.

Sundown.

There was something important, she was sure of it. She frowned as she made her way to the dining room and stood by the table. Something was taking on shape through the haze that held her memories back, and as Bilbo entered with their dinners, she furrowed her brow. “Bilbo,” she asked slowly as he set the plates on the table, “do you have any candles?”

“Candles? Whatever for? It won’t be dark enough to need them for another hour or so.”

She scrunched up her face. “I don’t know. It just- it feels right.”

Bilbo regarded her for a moment with a sympathetic expression before he went to fetch some candles. He came back with two, and placed them on the table in front of her. When he grabbed a small box of matches off of his shelf of pottery and prepared to light one, Leah held out a hand, frowning in concentration. “Wait.”

Bilbo waited.

Leah squeezed her eyes shut, trying to grab hold of the vague shapes in the back of her mind. They remained frustratingly unclear, and she exhaled sharply as she opened her eyes. “Could I?” she asked, holding her hand out for the matchbox.

Bilbo handed it over wordlessly, and Leah lit a match shakily. She lit one candle, and then the second. It was as if, for a brief moment, the candlelight had illuminated the shadowed corners of her memory. She blew out the match, and felt tears beginning to form as she remembered hundreds of Friday nights, lighting candles with her family.

Muscle memory took over, and Leah brought her hands above the candles and drew them towards her face, once, twice, three times. Bilbo looked on curiously as she covered her eyes with her hands and began to sing her first few tentative notes. “Barukh atah, Adonai.”

She took a deep breath and continued, more certain now. “Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu l’hadnik ner shel shabbat.”

Leah uncovered her eyes and watched the Shabbat candles, a few stray tears slipping down her face. She remembered her family. She had a mother and a father, a little brother. They were only the hazy outlines of people in her mind, yes, but she could _remember_ them.

The two candles flickered in front of her, and Leah took comfort in their quiet glow. She was going to remember. It might take time, yes, but she would remember and get back to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hebrew:**  
>  _Barukh atah, Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu l’hadnik ner shel shabbat._  
>  — Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the light of the Shabbat.  
> — [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2B_3lJaUY) is the melody that I learned along with this blessing, and that Leah uses, but I know that there are others.


	4. Call It Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so maybe I lied. Another chapter, because my brain refuses to let me slow down! This one's mostly filler and because _AQOTWF_ made me cry again today. Enjoy!
> 
>  _I know the world's a broken bone  
>  But melt your headaches, call it home  
> Hey moon, please forget to fall down  
> Hey moon, don't you fall down_  
> — ["Northern Downpour" (Panic! At The Disco)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zouSojyIi94)

Near the end of her first month in Hobbiton, Leah was seated in the grassy hills behind Bag End with a book in her lap. It was the book that had been in her bag when Bilbo discovered her in his garden, and it was her fifth or sixth time reading it since then. She read and reread in the hopes that it would knock something loose in her memory. It hadn’t yet, but still she read it over and over and over again.

The book told of a war in a world that felt as if it should’ve been familiar. She had asked Bilbo if he knew any of the places it talked about, but he told her that no, he had never heard of Germany, or France or Russia. Bilbo had asked around about the book and the author, but nobody even vaguely recognized it. If it was indeed ‘the greatest war novel of all time,’ as the cover so boldly proclaimed, why had nobody in the Shire ever heard of it?

Then there was the matter of the year the book was published, which was supposedly 1929. According to Bilbo, it was 1340 by Shire Reckoning, and year 2940 of the Third Age, as measured by the world outside of the Shire, but it didn’t make much sense by either system. There was no way for it to have been published in the future, but it certainly didn’t  _ look  _ like it was a thousand years old.

It was all very perplexing, but no answers were forthcoming thus far. So she kept poring over the pages, hoping that she could make them divulge their secrets if she just read it through one more time. As she turned the page, lounging in the late afternoon sunlight, she became acutely aware of the fact that she was being watched. She could hear the quiet brush of feet against the grass behind her as the person tried to creep up on her, but she didn’t look up from her book; she already had a vague idea of who was approaching.

The young hobbits — as she had learned the inhabitants of the Shire were called — had made a game of sneaking up on Hobbiton’s resident Big Folk. Leah delighted them, with her odd accent and exciting new games and unusual manner of dress (they were horrified by the fact that she wore shoes, which was something that amused Leah to no end), and she adored them.

She kept her gaze fixed pointedly on the page, and a small hobbit snuck up behind her. She could practically feel the little figure vibrating with excitement before they poked her shoulder with a “Boo!”

Leah pretended to be shocked, and brought her hand up to her chest as she turned to identify the specific delinquent faunt. “Magnolia Boffin. I might have known,” she teased, wagging a finger at the curly-haired hobbit-lass.

She just giggled and clapped excitedly. “I’m getting good at sneaking.”

Leah nodded solemnly. “I can see that.”

Magnolia peeked at the book in her lap. “What’re you reading, Miss Leah?”

“A book,” Leah said, making a mental note of the page number as she closed it.

The faunt plopped down on the grass next to her with an eye roll. “I can see that, silly. But what’s it about?”

Leah leaned back a little and hesitated. The book was rather depressing and bloody, and not at all age appropriate for the little hobbit. “It’s a secret,” she said finally, patting the cover.

Magnolia pouted. “Aww.”

Leah looked down at the book in her lap. She hated disappointing any of the faunts — Magnolia especially had her wrapped right around her little finger. Nobody in the Shire spoke or understood a word of English; surely there wasn’t any harm in reading the book out loud, was there? She still slipped into English sometimes, if she wasn’t paying attention, and the faunts were fascinated with the subtle cadence of the language, the way the words seemed to blur together with a mellow, almost song-like quality.

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “But I can read it to you, and then it’ll be your secret too.”

Magnolia brightened almost instantly. Leah reopened the book as she cleared her throat. “A little soldier and a clear voice,” she read in English, “and if anyone were to caress him he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and the shut heart, who marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten all else but marching.”

“Awl elsbud marshin,” Magnolia tried, and she looked so pleased with herself that Leah didn’t have the heart to correct her.

The little hobbit lay down on the grass, watching Leah’s lips move as she read, the foreign words spilling forth. “Beyond the sky-line is a country with flowers, lying so still that he would like to weep. There are sights there that he has not forgotten, because he never possessed them — perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his twenty summers there?”

They sat on the hill for some time, Leah reading and Magnolia listening intently. The curly-haired faunt scrunched up her face in concentration, as if she would somehow be able to understand if only she tried hard enough. After a couple of chapters, they were interrupted by Magnolia’s mother calling for her child from somewhere over the hill. She sulked when Leah stopped reading, and the older girl shooed her away gently. “Go on. We’ll keep reading tomorrow, yeah?”

Magnolia huffed, but nodded and reluctantly stood, brushing off her skirts before she made her way over to her mother. Leah shook her head fondly as she watched the little hobbit run off. During the short time she had spent in the Shire, she had grown quite attached to the land and the people who lived in it.

It was a beautiful place, with the rolling hills and pastures and neatly tended gardens. It felt full of life and cozy and  _ safe _ . The inhabitants weren’t perfect, of course, but then again nobody was. Shire-folk were overly critical of all things deemed odd or unusual; it was the label that had been given to Leah upon her arrival, but once they had warmed up to her, they were (for the most part) kindhearted and pleasant people.

The longer she went without memories of what had come before all of this, the harder it was to believe that they would all come back. Every once in a while, Leah would find herself thinking about how she could enjoy a life here, if they never did return to her.

Those thoughts always caused a funny sort of ache in her chest. Was it possible for her to build herself a life here, what felt like worlds away from her family? She knew she was incredibly far from home. The little flashes of memory she caught were enough to tell her that, at least.

Leah lay back on the grass and closed her eyes, clutching the book to her chest, as if it would help her hold onto the faint, hazy snippets of home. It didn’t, though, and eventually she picked herself up off of the hill and returned to Bag End to help Bilbo with dinner, her mind miles away from Hobbiton.

The two of them had a nice, quiet sort of companionship, the kind where you don’t have to say very much to enjoy each other’s company, and Leah was grateful for that. She was grateful for Bilbo Baggins, grateful that he had taken her in, grateful for everything that he had done for her. She could only hope to someday repay him for all of the kindness he had shown her.

* * *

The next day, Leah walked back to where she had been reading, her book tucked underneath her arm. Even before she saw them, she could hear the huddle of faunts whispering and giggling atop the hill, and she waved as they came into sight. “Miss Leah!” called one of the Goodworthy twins with a smile that could melt butter.

Magnolia ran up and grabbed her hand to pull her to the rest of the little hobbits. “They wanted to hear too,” she informed her.

Leah laughed and sat down on the grass. “And who am I to deny the wishes of such charming little hobbits?” she asked with a playful smile.

They shushed one another with gusto as she opened the book, and she waited for them to quiet down with a smile. Finally, they calmed enough for her to start reading in English. “The days, the weeks, the years out here shall come back again, and our dead comrades shall then stand up again and march with us, our heads shall be clear, we shall have a purpose, and so we shall march, our dead comrades beside us, the years at the Front behind us: — against whom, against whom?”

“Ginstoom!” Magnolia echoed excitedly.

The other faunts chimed in with various degrees of success, and Leah let out a snort at little Ferdy Bracegirdle’s enthusiastic “Inch who!”

They hung off of her every word as she read, words that meant nothing to them but meant everything to her. For them, this amounted to an afternoon’s entertainment, an unintelligible string of pretty-sounding noises that it amused them to repeat. For Leah, though, this was the only thing she had left to hold onto from a home she no longer remembered.

But she was happy to share it with the little hobbits, happy that it brought them joy (even with their egregious mispronunciations). So she read and she read and she read. Leah read for the faunts, turning the book into a melodramatic soliloquy for their amusement with her overexaggerated facial expressions and grandiose air.

When Leah could see that they were starting to get antsy, she closed the book and sent the little hobbits on their way. She absentmindedly thumbed the corner of the book as she watched them leave, bounding off with the tireless energy that only faunts seemed to possess.

A small smile flitted across her face, and she reopened the book, lowering her head. Leah read for herself, desperately searching the empty spaces between the words for something that might unlock her mind, and free her memories from wherever they were being held captive. She read until the words ceased to have meaning, becoming a meaningless flowery jumble, and then she kept reading. She read and she read and she read, until finally she reached the end and turned to the last page.

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.”

And then there was nothing more for her to read, and so she closed the book and placed it on the grass next to her. The homesickness seemed to crash over her all at once, overwhelming her with longing for a place she knew next to nothing about. Leah hugged her knees to her chest, and as she watched the sun slip behind the horizon, she started to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Book:**  
>  _All Quiet On The Western Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque


	5. Fever Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If she didn’t currently feel like she’d been sat on by an oliphaunt, Leah probably would have poked fun at the hobbit for his fretting. As it was, though, she didn’t have the energy to do much more than whisper a hoarse goodnight as Bilbo left with the empty bowl, and so she allowed her eyes to fall shut and for sleep to carry her away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it looks like we're doing daily updates until my hyperfocus abandons me! Yay!
> 
>  _Take another look before it goes  
>  Days are only footprints in the snow  
> How far away can I walk 'til I'm way too far from home?  
> I wish I knew, I wish I knew_  
> — ["fever dream" (mxmtoon)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owvji3p7kB0)

It was a perfect autumn day in Hobbiton — at least, as far as Leah could tell. She couldn’t really see much of it from where she was confined to her bed, but the brilliant reds and yellows in the view of the window made her want to run outside and crunch through the piles of leaves, playing in the brisk September air like one of the faunts.

Instead, she lay suffering inside of Bag End, accompanied only by the interminable ache in her limbs and a fatigue that seemed to go bone-deep. By themselves, the soreness and exhaustion would’ve been manageable, if thoroughly unpleasant, but her body had decided to pile a fever, cough, and chills on top of them. Needless to say, she felt absolutely miserable.

Leah had been sick for four days. She spent most of her time drifting in and out of a restless sleep as the illness ran its course. It had come on quickly, and within a matter of hours she had gone from being perfectly fine to being unable to get out of bed, feverish and wracked by coughing spells. To say that Bilbo had been worried would be a gross understatement. In the worst of it, he had found her trembling in her sleep as she pleaded with some unseen force in rapidfire English. He had no idea what to do to help her, and he hated it.

Hobbits rarely got this sick, and while he knew that the Big Folk were more susceptible to the illnesses of the body, that didn’t stop him from worrying. He’d already had Altheda Cotton come to Bag End to take a look at her, but the healer was just as baffled as he was. In the end, she’d settled on giving him a mixture of meadow-wort and elderberry to bring down her fever. “If it gets worse,” she had told him, “go to Bree and find one of their Big Folk healers. For now, though, I think she’ll recover if she rests and gets plenty of liquids.”

Bilbo had thanked her and taken her advice to heart — the hobbit made for a very effective mother hen. He had taken to supervising Leah’s mealtimes with surprising rigor, and refused to leave until she had drained every last drop of the broth he presented her with. If she didn’t currently feel like she’d been sat on by an oliphaunt, Leah probably would have poked fun at the hobbit for his fretting. As it was, though, she didn’t have the energy to do much more than whisper a hoarse goodnight as Bilbo left with the empty bowl, and so she allowed her eyes to fall shut and for sleep to carry her away.

_When she opened her eyes, she was sitting — standing? floating? she didn’t know, she just knew that she was there — in an empty room, staring straight ahead. The walls seemed to shimmer with infinite hues, almost like Saruman’s robes, shifting from one shade to the next and preventing her from pinpointing a single color anywhere on the wall in front of her._

_Who was Saruman?_

_The quiet was unbearable. It pressed in on her from every angle, and she could hear the faint rush of her blood, growing louder with each passing moment. Every breath she took sounded to her like a heavy gust of wind._

_Why was she here?_

_Once her eyes had adjusted to the chameleon-like shifting of the walls, she could just barely make out a rectangle. The outline of the shape flickered and morphed with the colors of the wall, and there was no handle, but she somehow still knew that it was a door._

_Where did it lead?_

_She had no idea how far away the wall was. It could just as easily have been within arm’s reach as it could’ve been miles away. She lifted her hand up to the door — or tried to, at least — but her limbs felt too heavy to move, as if her entire body had been dipped in wet cement._

_Why couldn’t she move? What was cement?_

_And then the floor fell out from under her, and she was freefalling through a clear blue sky, the rush of blood in her ears replaced by the rush of air in her face. She could barely open her eyes against the wind, and she kept them open just long enough to see that she was going to crash land in the middle of a field before she squeezed them shut, windmilling her arms wildly in a futile attempt to slow her descent. Her entire body tensed as she braced for impact._

_When none came, she opened her eyes cautiously to find herself standing in front of a cottage. It was a cozy little place that looked as if it had been plucked straight from the pages of a fairy tale, and it was so familiar that it ached. Something drew her towards the screen door at the front of the house, and as she approached it, almost in a trance, she could hear voices from inside._

_“-you think it’s a little late for a hike?” an elderly woman asked._

_There was a laugh that sounded suspiciously like her own, and a younger figure moved into sight. “Don’t worry, Bubbe. I’ll be back before sundown. I promise.”_

_She inhaled sharply. It was her inside of the cottage. Through the screen, she could see herself as she moved around the cluttered room, grabbing things and stuffing them in a canvas backpack. In an armchair on the far end of the room sat a frail old woman, looking almost as if a single well-placed breeze could knock her off of her feet, and Leah’s breath hitched in her chest._

_“You had better,_ motek _,” her grandmother scolded playfully, waggling a finger towards the Leah inside the cottage. “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to come after you myself. And you know how much I hate going out in these woods after dark.”_

_Leah brought a hand up to touch the door, and it was like somebody had pulled out the wrong block in the Jenga tower, and everything fell to pieces around her. The scene dissolved into a thick, roiling fog as soon as her palm made contact with the plastic mesh of the screen, and twenty-three years worth of memories ran into her like a freight train._

_Friends and family and holidays and neighbors and milestones and pets and everyone and everything else came whirling past in a technicolor blur, and each new memory felt like she was being body slammed by a concrete wall. They kept coming and coming and coming and coming and coming and they wouldn’t stop and nothing would stop and everything hurt, make it stop, please please_ please _just make it stop—_

Leah bolted upright, gasping for air as tears streamed down her face. She remembered. She _remembered_. She remembered everything.

Her name was Leah Rose Becker. She was 23 years old, finishing up her Bachelor’s in biology — she wanted to volunteer for the Peace Corps after she graduated. She had a 16 year old brother named David, who had a gap between his front two teeth and loved to draw, and a mother named Miriam who was tired most of the time but loved her children more than anything else in the world. And her father, oh god, she’d had a father named Evan who died in a car crash when she was eight.

It felt like losing him all over again. Leah drew her knees to her chest, and she hugged them tight as she rocked back and forth and sobbed in the early dawn glow. These past couple of months, she’d had no idea just how far from home she really was. She’d known she was unbelievably far, yes, but she had been thinking more along the line of oceans than entire worlds away.

Her sobs turned into coughs, and so she was crying and hacking up her lungs, and then crying harder because everything just hurt so much, and because she was so fucking done with everything. All the racket must have woken Bilbo — holy flying fuck, Bilbo Baggins — because then he was there in his bathrobe, frantically asking her if she was okay, which she was obviously not, and Leah couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.

When the tears finally subsided, she moved into a cross-legged position facing Bilbo, who was hovering nervously, and took a deep, shuddering breath to calm herself. “I, uh. I think my fever’s gone?”

The hobbit stared at her, completely thrown off, and she offered him an exhausted half-smile. Bilbo stuck his hands in his pockets and sighed in exasperation. “You spend a good fifteen minutes in a coughing fit — which, by the way, sounded like you were dying from the other side of the smial — and scare me half to death, and the first thing you comment on is your fever?”

She tilted her head as she pretended to consider. “Uhh, yeah. That sounds about right.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. I need a cup of tea.”

Leah opened her mouth to make a joke, but he saw the mischievous glint in her eyes and cut her off. “Nope. It’s wonderful to see you feeling better, but I think you need to rest your voice until _after_ I have had my morning tea,” he said firmly, and left before she could say anything.

Internally, Leah was reeling. She had just had a conversation with Bilbo Baggins. She had just been about to make fun of Bilbo Baggins. As in Bilbo Baggins, ring-bearer, burglar for the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.

Moreover, she was in Middle Earth. Arda. The place that had served as her refuge throughout most of her teenage years and well into her adulthood, and still held a special place in her heart to this very day. This very day, a day that she was spending _inside of fucking Middle Earth_.

She had been living in Bag End, Hobbiton, the Shire, for three and a half months. She had been living with Bilbo Baggins for three and a half months. Bilbo Baggins, who was turning 50 in less than a week, and in just a few short months would be embarking on a quest that would almost irrevocably shape the fate of Middle Earth and everyone in it.

Who knew what Leah’s presence would do? Even if she tried not to mess with canon, could her simple existence cause a butterfly effect and essentially gift-wrap all of Middle Earth for Sauron? And if she got involved in the thick of it, just how far could she go with the alteration of the proper sequence of events before one of the Valar ended up smiting her? (It would be really cool for the Valar to smite her, honestly, but she wasn’t about to test their limits.)

Could she even change things if she tried? The future was already written, yes, but that was in a different world altogether. How much of Tolkien’s work still held true? She was at least partially in the movie universe, going by Bilbo’s appearance, but what if she had landed in some weird hybrid universe? Or one that was combined with some completely different piece of fantasy literature?

Leah squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her temples, trying to stave off the headache she could feel coming on. She was a biologist for a reason; she couldn’t stand all the hypotheticals and uncertainty that came with the softer sciences. And she had enough to process, even without the whole ‘am I going to accidentally destroy the entire universe?’ dilemma.

This was like one of those ‘modern girl dropped in Middle Earth’ fanfics. No, scratch that, this was literally one of those ‘modern girl dropped in Middle Earth’ fanfics.

Dear lord god, she’d finally lost it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hebrew:**  
>  motek  
> — term of endearment analogous to sweetheart, commonly used to refer to loved ones


	6. I Know Where To Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She paused in the middle of the dirt path that led to Bag End, right in front of the familiar old man. “The Grey Wizard,” she said, more to herself than anything else. “So it’s that Tuesday already, then.”
> 
> The wizard took his pipe out of his mouth. “And what other Tuesday would it be?” he asked mildly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a shorter chapter, and it's also a little late, but I've got a bit more planned for the next few.
> 
>  _Feeling my way through darkness  
>  Guided by a beating heart  
> I can't tell where the journey will end  
> But I know where to start_  
> — ["Wake Me Up" (Avicii)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcrbM1l_BoI)

Leah really missed modern amenities. She missed meals being as easy as microwaving a cup of ramen noodles or reheating leftover takeout. She missed takeout in general. She missed not having to make her own soap and scrub every single piece of clothing she owned by hand three times. Hell, she missed owning more than one full outfit. She missed indoor heating and electricity, and supermarkets and coffee makers and ADHD medication and the Internet. Oh, and tylenol. Her period cramps were absolute hell without modern painkillers. Sure, the medley of herbs prescribed to her by the local healer eased the pain some, but beyond that, nobody really had any idea how to help her, because _apparently_ hobbits didn’t get periods. Lucky motherfuckers.

Leah really, really missed her family. She missed their movie nights and disastrous attempts at baking and pointless arguments over the right way to make a grilled cheese sandwich. She missed the little backyard garden that her father had started before he died and the spot on the roof she would go to sit when she needed to be alone with her thoughts and her cat, Lúthien. She missed her mother’s hugs, and the stupid pranks that David would pull on her. God, she couldn’t believe she ever wanted to move out. Leah missed them so much she couldn’t breathe. Every time she thought about them, it felt like someone was twisting a knife in her chest. She’d spent countless nights crying for them, crying for herself and everything she’d lost, and she was waiting for the day that thoughts of home didn’t make her immediately dissolve into a sobbing wreck.

In time, though, the twisting knife had turned into a dull ache, and Leah had pretty much accepted the fact that she was in Middle Earth. With the aid of her ADHD time blindness, the days slipped by in a blur of sameness and routine. Fall became winter became spring, and life at Bag End was her new normal.

When she wasn’t helping Bilbo with odd jobs around the smial or leading the faunts of Hobbiton on massive games of hide-and-go-seek and capture the flag, Leah kept herself occupied by brushing up on her Elvish. She had always been more interested in Quenya than Sindarin, which was kind of unfortunate. Quenya was kind of the Latin of the elves, and as such there wasn’t really any easily accessible material to study it. Bilbo had a couple of books written in the ancient elven language, but it wasn’t near enough to learn it. And even if there was a way for her to learn Quenya, it would’ve been pretty pointless. If she remembered correctly, nobody except for Galadriel spoke it as their mother tongue, and most elves outside of the Noldor considered it obsolete.

Again, it was all rather unfortunate, since her Quenya vocabulary was at least five or six times larger than her Sindarin one. But she borrowed some of Bilbo’s books about the elven tongue (thank fuck she could still read the Tengwar characters they were written in), and began to teach herself. Her Sindarin studies were accompanied by a bittersweet nostalgia for the long summer afternoons spent on the Internet, picking up random phrases in an attempt to out-nerd her little brother. In her senior year of high school, it had gotten to the point where they could almost have a discussion entirely in Quenya, but mostly they just dropped the phrases into normal conversation. There was one time when she’d walked into his room and announced, “Venenya vilyanirwanen ná quanta as angolingwi!”

Supposedly it meant ‘my hovercraft is full of eels,’ a nod to the classic Monty Python sketch. She doubted the accuracy of the phrase, given that the elves most likely didn’t have even the concept of hovercrafts, but it had made David laugh and so she didn’t particularly care how credible the translation was. God, she missed him so fucking much.

When she had started learning Sindarin, she’d wondered to herself how much of the language she could possibly pick up in the limited time she had. Almost immediately, Leah had laughed nervously at herself and brushed away the thought. Limited by what? The quest for Erebor? She didn’t even know if she was going. She probably wasn’t. She probably shouldn’t. There were just too many things that could go wrong.

But there was still a part of herself that longed to go, to take up arms and help the dwarves reclaim their homeland. It was a ridiculous notion, she knew that. What did Leah even have to offer to the Company that they would need, other than her extensive knowledge of future events, knowledge that may well be rendered obsolete just by her presence in Middle Earth? She was just a research scientist. She wasn’t a healer or a warrior. She was proficient in hand-to-hand combat, yes, but she’d only trained for purposes of self defense. Her only knowledge of fighting with weapons came from Game of Thrones, and while ‘stick them with the pointy end’ was probably pretty solid advice, she doubted that would be enough to keep her from getting herself killed. She would just be a liability. And she knew that Bilbo had even less experience with fighting than she did, and he was still the reason the entire quest had succeeded, but there remained the butterfly effect to be considered. It might be better just to keep her head down.

Leah had actually been rather successful in her avoidance of thinking about the possible plot continuum-related ramifications of her presence in Middle Earth. Until, that was, a bright day in April when she encountered a tall, grey-cloaked figure on her way back from a morning run.

She paused in the middle of the dirt path that led to Bag End, right in front of the familiar old man. “The Grey Wizard,” she said, more to herself than anything else. “So it’s that Tuesday already, then.”

The wizard took his pipe out of his mouth. “And what other Tuesday would it be?” he asked mildly.

Whoops. The more time she spent in Middle Earth, the more she found herself falling into Westron as her default mode of communication. “There’s a lot of other Tuesdays,” she hedged, “most of which don’t involve my running into one of the Istari.”

Gandalf regarded her with no small amount of curiosity, and Leah kicked herself mentally. The general public probably didn’t call wizards by their original Quenya name, even if they were aware of their existence. There went any chance of staying inconspicuous. “I’m Leah,” she said. “I’m staying with Bilbo Baggins.”

He inclined his head. “And I am Gandalf, though I suppose you already knew that.”

She shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny, feeling almost like a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I did,” she admitted.

There was an uncomfortable silence. And then, on an impulse, Leah threw caution to the winds. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you and the others tomorrow.”

The wizard’s curiosity increased tenfold, and he nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose you will.”

Leah gave him a brisk smile. “Until tomorrow, then, Gandalf.”

The wizard returned the smile, pensive, and Leah began jogging in the direction of Bag End. She could feel his inquisitive stare burning into the back of her neck, but she didn’t look back until she reached the front door. He was gone.

Leah exhaled slowly, bracing herself against the top of the doorframe. What had she been thinking? There would be no way to explain herself in a way that would satisfy Gandalf without admitting that she was from a different universe. Her brain-to-mouth filter was practically nonexistent, as evidenced by the fact that she had literally just told Gandalf that she knew he’d be showing up at Bilbo’s the next day with the Company in tow. Although, if there was anyone who she could trust with the truth of her origins, it would probably be him, an almost primordial spirit older than Middle Earth itself. “I just had a conversation with one of the Maiar,” Leah said to herself in English. “This is fine. This is normal.”

With a deep breath to calm her nerves, she went to open the door. It didn’t budge.

Right. Bilbo must have locked it after his conversation with Gandalf. She sighed, and lifted her hand to knock when something caught her eye near the bottom. She knelt to inspect it, brushing her fingers over the painted wood. There it was: the rune that the wizard had scratched into the paint, that one little symbol that would kickstart an adventure of epic proportions.

Tomorrow. It was all happening tomorrow. Tomorrow the dwarves would show up, tomorrow the quest and the contract would be presented to Bilbo, tomorrow everything would be set into motion. Leah stood with a sigh, and rang the bell by the door.

Nothing. She waited for a minute, and then rang it again, harder this time. She knew that Bilbo was home, so why wasn’t he answering? She rang again. Still nothing. Leah rolled her eyes, and started ringing the bell once more, growing faster and faster with each passing second the door remained unanswered. Finally, the door was thrown open. “I am _not_ going on an adventure!” Bilbo exclaimed hotly, before he saw the person at the door. “Oh. It’s you.”

Leah smiled, amused. “Who said anything about adventures?” she asked as she stepped across the threshold.

“Nobody. It’s nothing,” he said. “I told him no. There shan’t be any adventures for me.”

She knelt to unlace her boots. “Pity. An adventure sounds like fun. Plus, it might be good for you.”

The hobbit narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. “That is exactly what Gandalf said.”

“And maybe we’re both right,” she suggested with an innocent smile as she placed her shoes in the corner.

Bilbo scoffed. “Absolutely not. I am a perfectly respectable hobbit, thank you very much, and I haven’t any use for adventures.”

Little did he know. She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“I will!”

As she made her way to her room, she shook her head fondly. Oh, how things would change. Through thirteen months of danger and excitement, a very different hobbit would return to Bag End. Could she really stay behind, twiddling her thumbs while the adventure she had watched and read countless times, the quest she knew inside and out, took place?

Deep down, she knew that she couldn’t. And it was in that moment that her mind was made: she would leave Hobbiton in less than two days’ time. She was going with Bilbo, with the Company. She was going to march into certain danger with people she had never met but knew like the back of her hand, she was going to fight a dragon and reclaim the Lonely Mountain. She was going with them, no matter what it took.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A reference on ADHD and time blindness](https://adhdhomestead.net/time-blindness-feels/) for those of you without it. Thanks to mine, my brain is still convinced that it's February.


	7. Communication Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leah pulled the hobbit aside as the dwarves (very loudly) made their way to his pantry. “Bilbo,” she said gently, not really sure how to break it to him. “There’s, uh, there’s more coming.”
> 
> He blinked. “There’s _what_ now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (to the tune of All Star) Oh, the words start coming and they don't stop coming—
> 
> Anyways, I'm on a roll. I don't know why it's this specific scene but I'm just having so much fun with this. Don't be surprised if you get a second chapter today! (But also don't quote me on that.)
> 
>  _Communication breakdown,  
>  It's always the same  
> I'm having a nervous breakdown,  
> Drive me insane_  
> — ["Communication Breakdown" (Led Zeppelin)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EH7QMVnSRI)

Leah had long since commandeered all of the spare candles in Bag End. Now, she carefully wrapped a couple of handfuls of them in a thin blanket off of her bed, not wanting them to get damaged, and placed them in the bottom of her backpack along with a box of matches and two wooden candle holders.

After some debate, she decided to leave _All Quiet On The Western Front_ in Hobbiton. The book was one of the very few things she had from home, and she didn’t know what she’d do with herself if it ended up lost or soggy or shredded. She still hadn’t eaten the granola bars, and so she stuffed those in the bag. The only other things Leah had brought with her to Middle Earth were the first aid kit, which she packed for obvious reasons, and the clothes on her back.

She was also the owner of one very lopsided hat, courtesy of little Magnolia Boffin. The faunt had begun to learn to knit over the winter, and bequeathed one of her very first projects to Leah as a thank you. When asked what she was saying thank you for, though, the curly-haired little hobbit had giggled and told her that she needed to figure it out on her own. Children. Leah decided to take that as well, if only because it made her smile.

And that was it. That was everything that Leah owned, stuffed away into a single canvas backpack. Fourteen candles, two candle holders, a box of matches, two probably-stale granola bars, a first aid kit, and a hand-knitted hat. She buckled it up and sat back, hands clasped in her lap as she exhaled slowly. There was a small, sharp intake of breath from behind her, and Leah froze almost guiltily. “Leah?” Bilbo asked. “Where are you going? Are you leaving?”

She turned around, and gave him her best reassuring smile (which was, admittedly, not all that reassuring). “No. Not yet, anyways.”

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t look particularly convinced, and he stood in the doorway without saying anything. Leah hesitated, an idea coming to her. “Bilbo?”

“Yes?”

“Do you— do you think you have a spare handkerchief I could borrow?”

Bilbo gave her an odd look, but he went to fetch one for her without comment. She took it and thanked him quietly as she tucked the square of cloth into her bag. When the hobbit didn’t move from the doorway, she looked up at him expectantly. “I was coming to let you know that lunch was ready,” he said.

She stood. “Oh,” she said, placing her bag carefully on her bed. “Right.”

* * *

The moment of truth was approaching fast, and Leah could almost feel herself vibrating with anticipation. She had to physically restrain herself from checking the door, even though it was still late in the afternoon and she knew that Dwalin wasn’t supposed to arrive until after dinner had begun.

“Are you quite alright?” Bilbo asked, having watched Leah bouncing her leg impatiently for the past fifteen minutes.

She looked up distractedly from the Sindarin grammar book she’d been scanning but not processing a word of, leg bouncing still bouncing away. “Hm? Yes, I think so.”

He snorted in disbelief. “You think so?”

Leah hummed in agreement, returning to the top of the page on noun declension for the eighth time that evening. Bilbo sighed and returned to his reading. However concerned he was about her, he wasn’t about to get any answers when she was like this.

Eventually, she gave up on trying to cram some last-minute Sindarin study in and let her mind wander. She fidgeted, wondering how she was going to proceed. The easiest way to secure a spot in the Company, she decided at last, would be to pretend she had foresight. This meant dropping lots of hints that she knew more than she should’ve, or even just saying it outright. Finally, her nonexistent brain-to-mouth filter would come in handy for something.

And she wouldn’t be lying to them. Not technically, at least. Because she did have foresight, if you were talking about foresight as in ‘Tolkien told me what’s going to happen’ and not as in ‘I have visions of the future.’ Leah had already laid the framework with Gandalf yesterday morning, when she had inadvertently let slip that she knew he would be coming to Bag End with the Company. She didn’t know how much of the truth she was going to tell him, or even if she was going to tell him at all, so having the foresight explanation as a cover could be useful. All in all, it felt like a solid approach, and so she waited eagerly for the first of the dwarves to arrive.

* * *

Leah stepped away to use the restroom and completely missed Dwalin’s entrance. When she exited the bathroom, she found him in the dining room eating Bilbo’s dinner as the hobbit sat in the corner, disgruntled and perplexed. She sighed. “I leave for one fucking minute,” Leah said in English, crossing her arms.

Dwalin looked up at her, thrown off momentarily by the completely foreign language. “Dwalin, son of Fundin,” she said. “You could stand to be a little more polite.”

He eyed her suspiciously, but was overall unimpressed at her chastisement. Leah met his gaze evenly, and he returned to his food, slightly subdued. She took a deep breath. It was something, at least. She didn’t know what she was expecting. She didn’t really know exactly what she was trying to accomplish, even.

To be completely honest, Leah hadn’t actually thought anything out past ‘drop hints about having foresight and go with the Company to Erebor.’ In hindsight, she probably should’ve planned things out a bit more. But she hadn’t, and now she was left doing what she did best: winging it.

After a moment, Dwalin turned to Bilbo. “Very good, this. Any more?” he asked, mouth still full of food.

Bilbo looked at him blankly for a second. “What? Oh, yes, yes.”

The hobbit grabbed a plate of rolls, and hesitated before grabbing two and hiding them behind his back. “Help yourself.”

Dwalin stuffed a roll in his mouth, and looked up to see Leah glaring expectantly at him, eyebrows raised. “Thank you,” he said reluctantly through a mouthful of bread.

There was a part of Bilbo that wanted to play the part of the proper host, but there was a much larger part of him telling him very firmly that there was nothing proper about strange dwarves barging into your home as if they owned it. “It’s just that, uh, we weren’t expecting company,” he said apologetically.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the doorbell rang, and Leah had to stifle a smile. Bilbo stared at the front door apprehensively as Dwalin looked up at him. “That’ll be the door,” the dwarf said with a sideways glare.

Was he actively trying to scare Bilbo off? Probably, Leah realized as Bilbo opened the door to a cheerful-looking dwarf with a long white beard. The dwarves had very little faith in Bilbo, especially towards the beginning, and they probably figured that if he couldn’t handle a few angry dwarves ransacking his larder, there was no way he would be able to face off against a dragon.

Either that or they just had exceptionally poor manners. “Put that down,” she scolded as Dwalin grabbed a container of cookies.

He gave her his best intimidating stare (which was _very_ intimidating, to be honest), but Leah stood her ground and he placed them back almost sheepishly. Huh. “Evening, brother,” Balin said from behind her, and she stepped back to watch the familiar exchange.

“By my beard, you’re wider and shorter than last we met.”

“Wider, not shorter,” the white-haired dwarf corrected. “Sharp enough for both of us.”

Bilbo watched, aghast, as the two brothers promptly whacked their heads together. Leah laughed delightedly, and Balin turned towards her. “Balin, at your service.”

“Leah, at yours,” she returned with a small bow. “I must say, Master Dwarf, you have much better manners than your brother.”

Bilbo cut in hesitantly. “I’m not— I’m not entirely sure the two of you are in the right house.”

The dwarves just looked at him. “Nonsense, Master Baggins,” Balin said. “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

Leah pulled the hobbit aside as the dwarves (very loudly) made their way to his pantry. “Bilbo,” she said gently, not really sure how to break it to him. “There’s, uh, there’s more coming.”

He blinked. “There’s _what_ now?”

“There’s more coming. Dwarves. I can’t really tell you how I know, but there’s more coming, and I’m going to need you to trust me on this. Just, uh, go get dressed?”

The hobbit stared at her, trying to process what he’d just been told. “Please?” Leah added.

The doorbell rang again, and Leah nudged Bilbo in the direction of his bedroom. “I’ll handle them. Go.”

As soon as she opened the door, the two dwarves outside launched into their introductions. “Fíli—”

“—and Kíli.”

“At your service!” they finished in unison, complete with a perfectly synchronized bow.

That had to be rehearsed. There was no way that wasn’t rehearsed. “You’re not Master Boggins,” Kíli said.

“No, I’m not,” she agreed. “Leah, at your service.”

Fíli frowned, checking the mark on the door. “Are we at the wrong house?” he inquired.

Leah opened the door wider. “Not at all. Just wipe your boots off _before_ you come inside,” she said rather pointedly as Kíli tried to step over the threshold.

She took the dwarves’ weapons as they entered and closed the door behind her with her foot. “Be careful with these, I just had them sharpened,” Fíli told her.

“It’s nice, this place,” Kíli commented as Bilbo emerged from his bedroom, still fastening his suspenders. “Ah, you must be Master Boggins. Kíli, at your service,” he said with a bow, and gestured vaguely at the interior of the smial. “Did you do it yourself?”

Leah gave the hobbit an apologetic look as she set down the weapons gently by the door. “Trust me,” she mouthed.

Bilbo looked at her helplessly, but returned the dwarf’s bow. “Bilbo Baggins, at yours. And no, it’s been in the family for years. It was, uh, a wedding present to my mother from my father.”

The younger dwarf prince nodded amicably as his brother came up to their host. “Fíli, at your service,” he greeted, and bowed.

“Bilbo Baggins,” the hobbit replied with a stiff nod.

“Fíli, Kíli,” Dwalin called into the hallway. “Come on, give us a hand.”

“Master Dwalin,” Kíli said delightedly as the older dwarf put an arm around his shoulders.

Bilbo trailed after the dwarves as they made their way to the dining room. “Shove this in the hallway,” Balin instructed. “Otherwise we’ll never get everyone in.”

The hobbit let out a small whimper. “‘Everyone?’ How many more are there?”

The doorbell rang again, as if in response to Bilbo’s question, and Leah grabbed him by the shoulders. “Hey. Bilbo.”

“Leah. What are these… these dwarves doing in my house?” he questioned, distraught.

She gave him a pained smile. “It’s, uh, it’s complicated.”

“Were you— were you _involved_ in this?”

“What? No, no no no. I wasn’t.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. “Again, it’s complicated. Just please, trust me on this.”

Bilbo looked at her incredulously and made his way to the front door. He opened it with a little more force than absolutely necessary, and had to jump back to avoid being flattened by the pile of dwarves that now lay on his carpet. He took a deep breath, and turned to his friend. “Leah, if this is your idea of a joke—”

“It’s not, I swear,” she insisted.

“—then I can only say that it is in very poor taste!” he continued, pointing at her in accusation.

Before Leah could open her mouth to deliver a retort, the Grey Wizard stooped over to look at the hobbit. “Bilbo Baggins,” he greeted cheerfully, as if this was all a perfectly normal occurrence.

The hobbit stared at him. “Gandalf.”

Leah massaged her temples, trying to fend off the headache she could feel approaching. This was one hell of a hazing.


	8. The Dangling Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leah took another sip of tea to conceal the ridiculous grin that came to her face as the wizard walked off, presumably to talk to Bilbo. She had just quoted Harry Potter to Gandalf the Grey. This was all so surreal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: There's a section near the end that is potentially triggering due to descriptions of physical injuries (the ones that Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli sustain during the Battle of Five Armies) and vomiting. If this is an issue for you, please skip the part that comes after the horizontal line that follows Thorin's arrival at Bag End. I'll summarize those events in the end notes.
> 
> This took a little longer, but it's also a longer chapter than usual. I have another chapter draft lined up and I just need to edit it, so it should be out later tonight. Cheers!
> 
>  _Like a poem poorly written,  
>  We are verses out of rhythm,  
> Couplets out of rhyme,  
> In syncopated time  
> And the dangling conversation  
> And the superficial sighs,  
> Are the borders of our lives._  
> — ["The Dangling Conversation" (Simon and Garfunkel)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntOYUODSV0)

Gandalf cornered Leah in the hallway after the dwarves were finished making a mess out of the Bag End dining room. “You know we were coming.”

“Yes,” she said simply, tea cup in hand as she leaned against the wall. “I did.”

“And you knew of my order, and our original name.”

Leah nodded and took a long sip of her tea. This was the moment that could make or break her involvement in the quest. Even if she didn’t manage to persuade Thorin to let her join, if Gandalf was behind her, he could help her secure a spot in the Company.

“Go big or go home, I guess,” she mumbled into the cup in English, before switching to the Common tongue as she lowered her tea. “I know a lot of things, Olórin.” She took another sip, carefully watching his reaction. “I know of the Maiar, and the Valar. I know that you’re the servant of Manwë and Varda, though your path often crossed with that of Nienna, from whom you learned patience and pity.”

His expression was undecipherable. “And how came you by this knowledge?” the wizard asked, the curiosity in his voice tempered by caution.

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a very good idea to tell you that.”

“That may very well be true,” Gandalf conceded.

“I know your past,” she continued, “and I know your future. I know the future of everyone else who is to embark on this quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the clutches of Smaug.”

He regarded her carefully. “You should take care what you do with this knowledge, however you may have come by it. The tapestries of Vairë are not altered lightly.”

“Terrible things happen to those who meddle with time?” she suggested with a wry smile.

He nodded slowly. “Yes, exactly. I don’t think I could’ve said it better myself.”

Leah took another sip of tea to conceal the ridiculous grin that came to her face as the wizard walked off, presumably to talk to Bilbo. She had just quoted _Harry Potter_ to Gandalf the Grey. This was all so surreal. But as she pondered his words a bit more, the smile disappeared. One of the Maiar themselves had just told her not to get involved — or, at the very least, to be careful with how she got involved, which amounted to pretty much the same thing in the end.

She sighed and started to oversee the cleanup process. “Put that down,” she told Bofur, who had ignored Bilbo’s protests and proceeded to wipe his plate with the doily.

He stopped wiping but didn’t put it down, and Leah glared at him. “Now,” she said firmly, “or I’ll have no choice but to use your hat to clean up the rest of the dishes.

The dwarf looked horrified at the mere suggestion, and dropped the crocheted fabric as if it had burned him. She gave him a nod of acknowledgement, and turned to survey the rest of the dwarves. She had just lifted her tea to drain the cup when she heard Ori, from behind her, tell Bilbo, “You have a lovely wife, Master Baggins.”

The ‘wife’ in question immediately spit out her tea, choking. Leah had to brace herself against the wall, red-faced and coughing, as she gasped for air. Ori — poor, sweet Ori, who had only been doing his best to be polite — looked on in alarm and confusion as her coughs turned into wheezing laughter. “Wife!” she said in English. “Oh my god, imagine that. Me, married to Bilbo fucking Baggins. I’d be Leah Baggins. Holy fuck, that sounds so weird. I can’t do this.”

She regained her composure, her fit of laughter having brought her almost to tears, and took a deep breath before addressing the young dwarf in Westron. “Bilbo and I aren’t married. Or even, uh, romantically involved. At all. We’re friends. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Oh,” Ori said, frowning as he processed the concept of two people of different genders living together without being married.

Leah patted his shoulder sympathetically, and wondered how the concept of gay marriage would go over with the inhabitants of Middle Earth. Perhaps, though, dwarves already had gay marriage, and it was only the concept of roommates that was so unusual to him. “Apologies,” he said, and timidly turned back to Bilbo. “I was wondering what I should do with my plate.”

Bilbo opened his mouth to answer, but Fíli came up behind the hobbit. “Here you go, Ori, give it to me,” he said, deftly taking the plate from the younger dwarf’s grasp and throwing it towards his brother, ignoring Bilbo’s obvious alarm.

Leah bit back a laugh as her now-empty tea cup was plucked from her hands. She wasn’t going to intervene (although she doubted her ability to get the dwarves to stop even if she were to try), because who was she to interrupt a scene this iconic?

“Excuse me! That’s my mother’s Westfarthing pottery, it’s over a hundred years old!” Bilbo cried as he threw his hands up in distress, jumping backwards to avoid being hit with a flying piece of dinnerware.

The dwarves began to toss the dishes around in increasingly creative ways that were impressive, but quite frankly terrifying to watch, and the ones still seated in the dining room began to clang the silverware in a familiar percussion. “Could— could you not do that?” Bilbo asked helplessly. “You’ll blunt them!”

“Ooh, you hear that lads,” Bofur joked. “He says we’ll blunt them.”

Leah leaned against the wall with her arms crossed as the dwarves began to sing, and she hummed along with a small smile.

_Blunt the knives, bend the forks_   
_Smash the bottles and burn the corks_   
_Chip the glasses and crack the plates,_   
_That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates!_

_Cut the cloth, tread on the fat,_   
_Leave the bones on the bedroom mat_   
_Pour the milk on the pantry floor_   
_Splash the wine on every door_

_Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl_   
_Pound them up with a thumping pole_   
_When you’ve finished if they are whole_   
_Send them down the hall to roll!_

Bilbo pushed his way into the dining room, expecting to find it littered with shards of pottery, and stopped short at the neat stacks of dishes on the table. The dwarves laughed uproariously, and Leah didn’t even try to hide the grin that spread across her face. And then there was a series of muffled thumps at the front door — dramatic motherfucker, couldn’t he just use the door like everybody else? — and the laughter subsided. “He’s here,” Gandalf said.

The wizard opened the door and Thorin Oakenshield stepped into the smial, every bit the regal dwarf that Leah knew him to be. “Gandalf,” he greeted. “I thought you said this place would be easy to find. I lost my way. Twice.” He began to undo the clasp of his cloak, and the dwarves in the doorway to the dining room gave him a respectful nod. “I wouldn’t have found it at all had it not been for the mark on the door.”

Bilbo squeezed past the dwarves in the doorway to the dining room and into the hallway. “Mark? There’s no mark on that door, it was painted a week ago.”

“There is a mark,” Gandalf said, closing the front door, “I put it there myself.”

The hobbit looked up at him, trying to process everything that was going on, but the wizard paid no heed to the confused expression on his face. “Bilbo Baggins, allow me to introduce you to the leader of our Company: Thorin Oakenshield.”

Bilbo cautiously approached Thorin, who crossed his arms as he appraised the hobbit. “So. This is the hobbit.”

Bilbo just looked back at him, unsure of what to say. Yes, he was a hobbit, but why was he _the_ hobbit? “Tell me, Master Baggins,” the dwarf continued, “have you done much fighting?”

“Pardon me?”

The dwarf circled him with a little more malice than seemed strictly necessary. “Axe or sword? What’s your weapon of choice?”

“Well, I do have some skill in conkers, if you must know.” The hobbit tried to straighten out his posture to appear taller, clearly intimidated by the dwarven king. “But I fail to see why that’s relevant.”

Thorin stared back at him, thoroughly unimpressed by the hobbit’s efforts to seem more imposing. “I thought as much. He looks more like a grocer than a burglar,” he joked to the dwarves behind him.

They laughed, and Leah had to hold back from rolling her eyes at the dwarven king as the dwarves filed into the dining room. She had an immense amount of respect for him, and she understood that he didn’t want an inexperienced fighter to slow down and potentially endanger his Company. Still, she grimaced at the pained expression on Bilbo’s face and she gave his shoulders a comforting squeeze as she went to tidy up after the dwarves.

* * *

“Far to the East,” Gandalf said, smoothing out the map on the table, “over ranges and rivers, beyond woodlands and wastelands, lies a single solitary peak.”

Leah tuned out the familiar conversation as she helped Bilbo straighten up the painfully empty larders. She didn’t want to interrupt anything — not yet, anyways. Everything being said was just too important to Bilbo’s eventual decision to leave. Accidentally causing the Company to lose their burglar — the literal main character of the book or movie or whatever this was — would not be a very auspicious start to her quest.

Quest. Didn’t quests usually have an end goal in mind? What was she even trying to do here? Leah thought back to Gandalf’s warning. Would Vairë actually smite her if she overstepped? Could the Weaver be the reason she was here in the first place? She exhaled forcefully as she rearranged the empty wicker baskets on the shelves and wondered what would happen if she actually tried to change the way the story ended. Would she end up getting more of the dwarves killed? Or, heaven forbid, Bilbo? Herself, even?

She shuddered at the idea, and shook her head quickly to rid herself of the thought. None of those things were going to happen. Leah wasn’t going to let it. With a firm nod, she grabbed a broom and listened discreetly back in on the conversation behind her as she swept the crumbs on the pantry floor into a neat pile. “I’m not afraid, I’m up for it,” Ori declared. “I’ll give him a taste of dwarvish iron, right up his jacksie!”

He was met with cheers and shouted encouragement. As Balin spoke, an image flashed across Leah’s mind, unbidden: a crumbling, cobweb-covered skeleton in the halls of Khazad-dûm, the dusty bones of its arms clutching a book to what used to be its chest. She swallowed hard, squeezing her eyes shut. The image refused to leave.

“We may be few in number,” Fíli said, banging his fist on the table, “but we’re fighters, all of us. To the last dwarf!”

_—a sword, sliding easily into the midriff of a dwarven prince; a rag-doll corpse being dropped off of the edge of a cliff, falling past his horrified brother—_

“And you forget we have a wizard in our company! Gandalf will have killed hundreds of wizards in his time,” Kíli insisted earnestly.

_—a hand around a young dwarf's neck and the sharpened handle of a mace through his chest; a solitary tear slipping down his face, the last tear he will ever shed—_

She stopped sweeping and swallowed the bile she could feel rising in her throat, her knuckles white as she clenched them around the broom handle. The dwarves’ arguing crescendoed behind her. “Enough!” Thorin shouted, rising from his seat. “If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them too? Rumors have begun to spread. The dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look East to the mountain, assessing, wondering, weighing the risk.”

_—a pale orc standing above his nemesis with a triumphant grin, pinning the King Under the Mountain to the ice with a single sword stroke through his stomach—_

Leah gagged and dropped the broom, clapping a hand to her mouth as she rushed to the bathroom. Dropping to her knees, she opened the toilet and retched into the bowl, grateful for the fact that her hair was in a single braid and she didn’t have to hold it out of the way. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, and the images played through her mind over and over and over again. The line of Durin, broken at last.

There was a hesitant knock on the door. “Leah?” Bilbo asked. “Are you alright?”

_—a hobbit trying to save a dying dwarf but having absolutely no idea how to do so; that same hobbit cradling his friend as the eagles swooped over the battlefield, pointing them out while the dwarrow took his last breath—_

Oh, god. Bilbo, with his unshakeable faith in the goodness of the world. She couldn’t let that happen to him, could she? “Leah?” he asked again. “Do I need to come in?”

“No,” she said weakly, and cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Go back to the Company.”

There was a pause. “Alright,” Bilbo said, and she could hear him retreat down the hall.

Leah sat in front of the toilet quietly, a few tears slipping down her face as she interlaced her fingers in her lap. What was it that Gandalf would say later that night, when Bilbo asked him if the wizard could guarantee that he would return? ‘No. And if you do, you’ll not be the same.’

She might not come back in one piece. Leah might not survive this, and she might not be able to change anything. She was just one person, scared and alone, farther from home than she’d ever thought possible. But she was going to try, because what did she have left after hope? Hope was the last thing she could truly say that she still had, and she was going to hold onto it for dear life.

Although she wasn’t alone. Not exactly. She had Bilbo, she told herself as she stood to freshen up, and she was going to do whatever it took to make sure that he didn’t have to suffer the loss of his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Summary:**  
>  After Thorin's arrival, Gandalf explains the map to the Company. Leah, who hasn't spoken a word since the dwarf king's arrival, is sweeping the pantry when Ori, Fíli, Kíli, and Thorin's voices set off the memories of their deaths in the movies. She has to run to the bathroom to hurl, and Bilbo comes to check on her. She shooes him away, and promises herself that he won't have to experience the death of his friends.


	9. The Weight of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t you be attending to your husband?”
> 
> Leah groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Again? Do you people just not have roommates? For the second time tonight, he’s not my husband. We are friends who happen to live together because I don’t have any money for a house of my own. And he should be waking up right about now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo! I'm going to pass out now, so enjoy the fruits of my labors. Please feed me with comments, I love hearing your thoughts on my work.
> 
>  _I may fail you, if I fail to  
>  Fight 'til we're all in the clear, look my fear in the eye  
> The weight of the world's on my shoulders,  
> Like Atlas, it's crushing me down  
> We're not brave, we're not strong, we're not soldiers  
> My heart's just a drum, and, damn, does it pound_  
> — ["Try" (The Lightning Thief)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0U_Cdrbols)

When Leah finally exited the bathroom, Bofur was speaking. “—light, searing pain, and then poof! You’re nothing more than a pile of ash.”

She grimaced at the mental image, but hurried down the hall to catch Bilbo when he passed out. The hobbit considered the dwarves for a moment, looking faint. “Nope,” he said, crumpling to the floor the instant before Leah reached him.

“Oh, very helpful, Bofur,” said Gandalf.

Bofur grumbled at that a little, and the Company looked as if it was about to disperse. “Wait,” Leah said from where she was down on one knee to check on Bilbo, accidentally falling into English. “There’s more that— wait, no, sorry.” The dwarves were all looking at her, and she took a deep breath and stood before switching back to Westron. “Sorry. I still slip into English whenever I’m stressed. What I mean to say is that all fourteen of you are going to stay right where you are, because there’s more that we need to discuss.”

Thorin turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t you be attending to your husband?”

Leah groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Again? Do you people just not have roommates? For the second time tonight, he’s not my husband. We are friends who happen to live together because I don’t have any money for a house of my own. And he should be waking up right about now.”

She gestured vaguely at where the hobbit was laying on the floor. Sure enough, he stirred. “You good?” she asked him.

He nodded, picking himself up from the floor. Leah patted him on the shoulder and turned back to the dwarrow. She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. “Okay, uh, there’s no easy way to say this. I know how this quest ends.”

“You _what_?” Bilbo asked from beside her, wondering if he’d perhaps smacked his head a little too hard on the floor when he fell.

“It’s, uh, complicated. Really, really complicated. But I know what happens, and when, and where and how everything goes wrong. There’s… there’s a lot of things.”

It wasn’t going to be as simple as presenting herself as some sort of omniscient prophet, she knew that. She would need to prove it to them in whatever way that she could, and she scanned the Company, trying to gauge their reactions. In their faces, she found emotions ranging from confusion to disbelief to derision. Thorin stood to face Leah and fixed her with a hard glare. “And what, pray tell, would these _things_ be?”

She grimaced. “I can’t exactly tell you.”

He raised a single brow, clearly unimpressed with her efforts. “It’s just— if I tell you now, so far before they actually happen, you might pull on the wrong threads in an attempt to keep them from happening and unravel the whole cloth. You can’t go around trying to mess with the tapestries of Vairë if you don’t see the whole picture, and I really don’t want to piss off any of the Ainur by causing you to accidentally destroy her work.”

Leah was met by blank stares, and she realized that the dwarves probably didn’t know the deities of Arda by their elvish names, if they even knew of them at all. “Okay, uh, history lesson for those of you that don’t know. The Ainur. Pretty much the oldest things to exist, aside from Eru himself. Older than Middle Earth, in any case,” she said, casting a sideways glance at Gandalf. “Fourteen of them are called the Valar, and they helped to shape Middle Earth in its earliest days. Among their number is Aulë, whom you would refer to as Mahal.”

The dwarves made various noises or gestures of recognition, but Thorin hadn’t moved a muscle. Leah locked eyes with him as she continued. “Vairë is one of the Valier. The Queens of the Valar. I’m not entirely sure as to the extent of her powers, but it’s a bad idea to upset the Valar as a general rule. She resides in the Halls of Mandos, where she weaves the story of Middle Earth.”

“Halls of Mandos?” asked one of the dwarves.

Leah sighed. She could easily see herself getting started with explaining the entire contents of _the Silmarillion_ from here, in which case everyone would be here listening to her ramble until dawn. “Where the souls of elves and men go after death. Look, the point here is that you don’t want to mess with her.”

Thorin inclined his head in acknowledgement, and Leah continued. “Now, I can’t prove my knowledge to you, because none of you have any idea what is going to happen. I could tell you everything the Company encounters between now and Durin’s Day, and you would have no idea if I was making it up or not.”

The king-in-exile furrowed his brow. She wasn’t a dwarf, Durin’s Day shouldn’t mean anything to her. “Durin’s Day?” he questioned, frowning intently at her.

Despite being almost a foot shorter than her, Thorin was absolutely terrifying. She swallowed. Right. They wouldn’t know about the Durin’s Day deadline until Lord Elrond read the moon runes. “It’s— it’s not important. Not now, anyways.”

He stared her down, and she took a step back. “I can’t tell you! It would throw off so many things that are vital to the success of this quest.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Look. My knowledge of the future would not convince you, even if I would divulge it. But my knowledge of the past can speak for itself. The Istar here,” she said as she turned to Gandalf, emphasizing the Quenya title for wizards, “can confirm that I know more than I should.”

The wizard nodded slowly, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I do believe that she is telling the truth.”

“But the past is not the future,” Thorin argued. “And do you forget there is already one among our number who can read the signs that foretell the future? We have no need of her, a hobbit’s housekeeper, to guide us through our quest.”

His voice was practically dripping with an all-too-familiar condescension, one that Leah had heard coming from teachers and supervisors and random people on the street alike — all men. She closed her eyes to take a deep breath, anger clouding her mind. In the months she had spent living with Bilbo, Leah had more or less forgotten what it was like to have her abilities demeaned simply because she was a woman. A part of her had hoped, naïvely so, that the dwarrow would be different from their human counterparts in terms of gender standards. But they weren’t, because the universe — or maybe it was the Valar now — liked to make her life as difficult and unpleasant as possible.

Leah opened her eyes, and there was a hardness in them to match that of the dwarven king themself. She could feel the atmosphere tense as she spoke, her voice icy. “Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór. You are an obstinate ass.” She didn’t know exactly what she thought she could accomplish by insulting him here, but it felt good to say. “I am _trying_ to help you.”

He glared at her, arms crossed, and she met his gaze evenly. There was a pause. “And why do you want to help us?” Balin asked, breaking the silence.

Leah shifted her attention to the elderly dwarf, considering her answer with a pained expression. “People are supposed to die,” she said finally, her voice breaking a little. “People that I care about.” And it was true; she did care about Fíli and Kíli and even Thorin, pretentious fucker that he was. She couldn’t let them die. “There’s collateral damage to this quest. A lot of it. I— I have to believe that I’m here for a reason. To keep people from dying. So however many people I can manage to save can go home to their families, so however many more children won’t have to wake up at the end of it orphans, or so that they can even wake up at all. I will see this quest through to the end. I’m going, whether or not you see fit to invite me to your little club. I can’t let you fuck this up.”

Having said her piece, Leah turned quietly to leave, unwilling to let the Company see her cry. There was nothing but silence behind her.

* * *

Gandalf approached Bilbo after the dwarves had scattered from the dining room. “Just let me sit quietly for a moment, please,” he said.

The wizard shot him a look. “You’ve been sitting quietly for far too long. Tell me, when did doilies and your mother’s dishes become so important to you? I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of Elves, in the woods. He’d stay out late, come home, after dark, trailing mud and twigs and fireflies. A young hobbit who would’ve liked nothing better than to find out what was beyond the borders of the Shire. The world is not in your books and maps. It’s out there.”

A large part of Bilbo wanted to leap at the chance, to accept, but he said nothing, thinking of Leah’s words. ‘People are supposed to die,’ she had said. ‘People I care about.’ He leaned against the wall. “Can you promise that I will come back?”

“No,” Gandalf said. “And if you do, you will not be the same.”

Bilbo exhaled. “That’s what I thought.”

“So you won’t sign the contract?”

The hobbit shook his head, but even as he did so, he knew that he didn’t really mean it. “You’ve got the wrong hobbit. Or person, I suppose. You should give it to Leah,” he said, and walked off before he could change his mind.

Balin and Thorin watched him leave from the shadowed hallway. “It appears,” Balin commented, “that we have lost our burglar. Probably for the best. The odds were always against us. After all, what are we? Merchants, miners, tinkers, toy makers. Hardly the stuff of legend.”

Thorin gave his old friend a meaningful look. “There are a few warriors among us.”

“Old warriors,” the white-haired dwarf corrected.

“I would take each and every one of these dwarves over an army from the Iron Hills, for when I called upon them, they answered. Loyalty, honor, a willing heart. I can ask no more than that.”

Balin gave him a tired smile. There was a pause, and then the old dwarf decided to broach the topic of the other potential member. “It would appear that there is another too, who came though you did not call for her,” he commented. “Someone — or something — else, it would seem, has called her to your aid.”

Thorin’s gaze darkened. “Whatever it was, I do not trust it. You know how I feel about seers and prophets.”

Balin nodded slowly. “I do.”

There was another pause. And then: “You don’t have to do this. You have a choice. You’ve done honorably by our people. You have built a new life for us in the Blue Mountains. A life of peace and plenty. A life that is worth more than all the gold in Erebor.”

Thorin held up the key, gripping it so tightly that the dull edges of the handle dug painfully into his palm. “From my grandfather to my father, this has come to me. They dreamt of the day when the dwarves of Erebor would reclaim their homeland. There is no choice, Balin. Not for me.”

“Then we are with you, laddie. We will see it done.”

* * *

The first dwarf Leah encountered upon exiting her room was Bifur. He was seated on a bench by the entryway, carving something out of a small, vaguely bird-shaped block of wood. She gave her eyes one last wipe with the heel of her hand and eased herself down next to him, watching as a little swallow took shape underneath his expert knife. “Bifur, right?”

He nodded, not looking up from his work. “I don’t know any Khuzdul,” she said, “or Iglishmek. So I’m sorry for that.”

The dwarf gave a little shrug, and held up the little wooden bird to inspect it. Leah inhaled sharply. Bifur looked to her, frowning, and she ducked her head in embarrassment. “Sorry. It’s just— my dad, he used to carve things. The last thing he ever gave me was a bird, kind of like that. Not anywhere near as elaborate as yours, but it just made me think of him.”

Bifur said something in Khuzdul, and Leah heard a rustle of movement to her right. “He asked,” Fíli translated, stepping out of the shadows of the hallway with his brother, “what happened to your father.”

Leah hesitated. She couldn’t very well tell them the truth. ‘Car accident’ would require explaining what a car was, and then probably where she came from, and there were way too many things that could go wrong there. “He, uh, got trampled beneath a horse. I was pretty young.”

The brothers extended their condolences, and Bifur said something that probably meant something along the same lines in Khuzdul before returning to his carving. Leah waved Fíli and Kíli off before dropping both her hands and her gaze to her lap. “It was years ago. It’s fine.”

She fidgeted with the pockets on her cargo pants, but she could still feel the two dwarven princes still looking at her. Leah raised her head to look at them. “Yes?” she asked, lifting a single eyebrow.

Kíli coughed. “Do you really see the future?”

Leah pulled a face. “It is significantly more complicated than that. But ultimately, yes, I do have some knowledge of things that will come to pass. Or a lot of things, depending on how you look at it.”

She stood and surveyed the hobbit hole. The dwarves appeared to be in the correct position, and the timing felt about right. “Now, off with you,” she told the princes with a shooing gesture, “I think you have a ballad to sing.”

The two of them stared at her, and she went to go find Bilbo. He was in his study, leaning against the doorway, and she joined him quietly as the dwarves began to hum the first notes.

There was a depth to the music that the movies hadn’t been able to properly capture, in the sense that it pulled you in and enveloped you with the pure, unadulterated sorrow of losing the only home that you’ve ever known. It was a melancholy that Leah felt in her very bones, that slow, aching kind of sadness. It’s the kind that can destroy you from the inside out if you’re not careful. Bilbo felt it too — she could see it in the way his shoulders tensed as Thorin began to sing.

_Far over the misty mountains cold  
To dungeons deep and caverns old  
We must away ere break of day  
To find our long forgotten gold. _

_The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,  
While hammers fell like ringing bells  
In places deep, where dark things sleep,  
In hollow halls beneath the fells. _

Leah was pretty sure that verse wasn’t in the movie, and she absentmindedly filed that little piece of information in the back of her brain as she listened to the dwarrow’s song.

_The pines were roaring on the height,  
The winds were moaning in the night.  
The fire was red, it flaming spread;  
The trees like torches blazed with light. _

_The bells were ringing in the dale  
And men looked up with faces pale;  
The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire  
Laid low their towers and houses frail. _

_The mountain smoked beneath the moon;  
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.  
They fled their hall to dying fall  
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon. _

_Far over the misty mountains grim  
To dungeons deep and caverns dim  
We must away, ere break of day,  
To win our kingdom back from him! _

_Farewell we call to hearth and hall!  
Though wind may blow and rain may fall  
We must away, ere break of day,  
Far o'er the wood and mountain tall. _

If there was any small part of Leah that had doubts about what she was doing, it had long since dissipated. In the dwarves’ song she heard a homesickness that resonated with her on a level that she hadn’t known anything could resonate with her. It reawakened that part of her that she had locked away in the previous months, the part of her that really just wanted to go home and to see her mom and her brother again.

Maybe she could, maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she’d survive, and maybe she wouldn’t. But she’d be damned if she didn’t see the dwarves make it back to their own kingdom, and all of them would end up alive to enjoy the comforts of having a home. To hell with the plot continuum.


	10. I Wish I Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With one last wave to the little hobbits, she turned and started running to catch up with Bilbo. She laughed to herself as she did, hearing the excited shouts of encouragement behind her. When she’d imagined the heroic quests she’d go on as a little kid, this was nowhere near what she thought her going-off party would look like. Still, she preferred it to a fancy feast or whatever other fantasy heroes got as their going-off parties. God, she was technically a fantasy hero now. That hurt to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I am very sorry for the long wait I forgot to take my ADHD meds for a week and my work ethic took a nosedive. But I'm back! Please stoke my ego with kudos and comments.
> 
>  _And every stranger's face I see  
>  Reminds me that I long to be  
> Homeward bound,  
> I wish I was homeward bound,  
> Home, where my thought's escaping,  
> Home, where my music's playing,  
> Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me_  
> — ["Homeward Bound" (Simon and Garfunkel)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0oJ8_VTu3c)

Leah awoke the next morning on the couch in the Bag End living room with the Misty Mountain ballad still echoing through her mind. She yawned, stretching in the post-dawn glow that filtered in through the windows of the smial. Her back was unbelievably sore from the awkward position in which she had been asleep.

What a wonderful start to the quest.

She looked around the room. The dwarves had already left, and some small part of her remembered them quietly filing out shortly before she passed out on the couch. They probably had ended up crashing at the Green Dragon Inn, over in Bywater. She stood up and stretched once more, and her back made some very suspicious cracking noises. “What to do, what to do, what to do,” she mumbled drowsily as she shuffled down the hall.

Assuming she didn’t break her neck doing something stupid and humiliating, Leah was going to be on the road for over a year. There wasn’t going to be any guarantee of food until at least Rivendell, so she might as well enjoy a nice, full meal while she still could.

Except the dwarves had all but emptied the pantry the previous night for dinner. She swept her eyes over the painfully empty shelves, taking stock of everything they had left. It wasn’t much. Leah sighed and helped herself to a basket of carrots that had been left ignored on one of the bottom shelves. So much for a nice, full breakfast.

Chomping on a carrot, she made her way back to the living room and picked up the Sindarin grammar book. She didn’t want to bring it with, for the same reasons she wasn’t bringing her own book, but she could get some final cramming in. The dwarves wouldn’t be leaving for another four or so hours, and she’d be fine if she just read a chapter or two. She could wake Bilbo up early, he’d sign the contract, and they could pack and get going without being late.

Five chapters later, Bilbo hurried into the room, stuffing odds and ends in a traveling pack with the presumably signed contract stuffed haphazardly into his pocket. “ _S_ _hit_ ,” Leah said, snapping the book shut and almost tossing it aside. “We need to go. We’re late.”

Bilbo paused in his packing endeavors and narrowed his eyes at her, as if he was about to say something, but decided to leave whatever it was for later. She flashed the hobbit a pained smile that probably came out as more of a grimace, and dashed to her room to grab her own pack. As she was about to put the backpack on, something occurred to her, and she dropped the bag back on the bed with a groan. “Bilbo?” she called across the smial. “Do you think you have a spare coat or cloak or something that might fit me?”

They were going to be traveling through harsh weather and rough terrain, and it didn’t seem particularly wise to go through all of that with only one layer protecting her from the rain and the cold. Granted, she still had her sports bra, which was a little battered but no worse for the wear, but she wasn’t sure that she could actually count that as a layer.

Luckily for her, Bilbo had found a spare coat of his, and Leah pulled it on. It was a little short (for Middle Earth’s standards, anyway; it wasn’t like she didn’t wear crop tops back home) but better than nothing, and it would hold her over until Rivendell at the least. “I have never been more grateful to fit into youth sizes than at this specific moment,” she mumbled in English as she stretched to check the fit of the jacket.

“What was that?” Bilbo asked absently, bouncing on the balls of his feet in his eagerness to leave.

“Nothing,” she said, slinging the straps of her backpack over her shoulders. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

As they hopped fences and cut through fields, Leah realized that she hadn’t felt this alive since her arrival in Middle Earth. Hobbiton was a lovely place, yes, but Leah had always been a bit of a restless soul. She needed to keep moving, to try new, exciting things; there wasn’t much opportunity for that in the Shire.

When they cleared the final fence, Leah heard someone call her name and hesitated. Several someones, to be precise; it was the faunts. She was going to be gone for a year, with no guarantee that she would actually come back. Plus, she’d gotten quite attached to the little hobbits. She had to say goodbye.

“Keep going, Bilbo, I’ll catch up,” she called, and turned around.

She approached the fence, where the faunts were buzzing with curiosity on the other side. “Where are you going?” asked little Ferdy Bracegirdle.

Leah offered them a mysterious smile. “I’m going on an adventure,” she informed them in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

She was met by excited oohs and aahs, along with overlapping questions. She held up a hand for quiet. “I’m going to fight a dragon. I’ll be gone for a year, maybe more. I love you all, and I’ll bring you back plenty of stories.”

“Stab him for me!” Magnolia yelled from the back, and the other faunts backed her up with enthusiastic cheers.

She chuckled fondly. “I’ll be sure to. Now, I must be going. Wouldn’t want to be late, now would I?”

With one last wave to the little hobbits, she turned and started running to catch up with Bilbo. She laughed to herself as she did, hearing the excited shouts of encouragement behind her. When she’d imagined the heroic quests she’d go on as a little kid, this was nowhere near what she thought her going-off party would look like. Still, she preferred it to a fancy feast or whatever other fantasy heroes got as their going-off parties. God, she was technically a fantasy hero now. That hurt to think about.

There was an almost giddy smile on her face as she cut into the forest, putting on one last spurt of speed to catch up with the hobbit she could see in the distance. As she got closer and closer, she tried to school her face into something more impassive. Thorin hadn’t agreed to take her on the quest, and if she showed up grinning like an idiot he was liable to hogtie her to a tree or knock her unconscious and leave her in a ditch.

“Wait! Wait!” Bilbo called ahead of her, waving the contract in the air as he came to a halt. “I signed it.”

Leah came up behind him just as Balin said, “Everything appears to be in order. Welcome, Master Baggins, to the company of Thorin Oakenshield.”

“Give him a pony,” Thorin said, twisted around in his saddle to better see their burglar.

Then, he locked eyes with Leah and his expression darkened. “You’re not coming.”

She met his gaze coolly, even though her anxiety felt like it was gnawing a hole through her stomach. “I’m coming,” she said simply.

“I will not have you endanger our quest,” he snapped, turning his pony to face her.

Her eyebrows shot up, and she crossed her arms defensively. “Endanger? I’m quite literally trying to do the opposite.”

 _And if you could pull your head out of your ass for a minute_ , she wanted to say _, maybe you’d be able to see that_. But insulting the dwarven king was definitely not going to get her a spot on the expedition.

“You tried, and you’ve failed,” he said, clearly impatient to get rid of her. “Go home. I have already allowed for one liability, it would be unwise to take on someone else who cannot pull their weight. I will not force my Company to look after another who knows little of battle or true danger.”

Leah closed her eyes and took a deep breath, opening her eyes as she exhaled sharply. He was only acting with the best interests of his Company at heart. “I know more of the dangers and the consequences of this journey than anyone, Thorin Oakenshield,” she said, anger bubbling below her even, measured tone. “I might not be a dwarven warrior with a century of experience, but I can handle myself well enough in the things that are to come.”

He said nothing, and the rest of the Company was watching the exchange with bated breath. “I will follow behind on foot, if need be,” she informed him. “I don’t give a shit about a contract, or a share of the treasure. Hell, I don’t actually want either of those things. But I am coming.”

They stared at each other in the heavy silence that followed her words, neither wanting to be the first to look away. “I think,” Gandalf cut in, “that she should come.”

Thorin looked to the wizard, who showed no signs of backing down under the dwarven king’s glare. “Very well,” Thorin said, nodding stiffly as he turned his pony back around and kept moving. “She can have one of the supply ponies,” he called over his shoulder, and he watched as Dwalin nudged one of the animals towards her.

Leah eyed Thorin suspiciously as she took the pony’s reins. The dwarf raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

She narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion before turning to the creature. There was no saddle. She looked up at Thorin. “There’s no—”

“Saddle?” he said, faintly amused. “I suppose you’d be correct in that observation. You wanted to come, that is your horse. Either get on, or walk. It’s your decision.”

“Ass,” she muttered in English, turning to the pony.

She frowned, trying to figure out how best to mount it without completely embarrassing herself. The animal’s back came to about halfway up her torso. Leah could feel the Company watching her as she braced her hands against its back and jumped, swinging her leg up and around. Surprisingly enough, she landed squarely on its back on her first try. Thorin looked almost disappointed, and then she gave the reins an experimental tug. The horse took a step forward, and she fell off. “Motherfucker!” she yelped in English, narrowly missing Dwalin’s pony as she fell flat on her back in the dirt.

Her candles were probably broken, but that was the least of her worries at that point. The dwarves were laughing openly, and even Gandalf let out a little chuckle at her misfortune. She fixed Thorin with a death glare as she dusted herself off and stood back up, and he just smiled smugly back at her. Forget Azog, Leah was going to kill him herself.

She swung herself back up onto the pony, this time squeezing its sides with her legs so she wouldn’t fall off again. “Are we going, or are you just going to keep laughing at me?” she asked.

Thorin silently turned back around in his saddle, motioning for the Company to follow him as he began to move, and Leah glared daggers into his back. She wobbled a bit as the pony began to walk, but managed to gain her balance before falling off. By the time she managed to maneuver herself next to Bilbo, with no small amount of difficulty, the dwarves were already settling their bets. There appeared to be more money being tossed around than she remembered, and Leah wondered if they had bet on her as well as on Bilbo. A money bag whizzed past her ear just as Bilbo sneezed, and she ducked, almost losing her balance. “Shit,” she hissed, grabbing onto the horse’s neck to steady herself.

With the whole horse fiasco, she’d almost forgotten about the handkerchief. She rummaged around in the pockets of her cargo pants as the hobbit called for them to turn back, muttering, “Bilbo, you idiot.”

“What on earth is the matter?” Gandalf asked, sounding a little annoyed.

“I forgot my handkerchief,” he responded, distraught as he continued to pat himself down in search of his hanky.

Leah silently passed him the handkerchief she had borrowed from him two days prior, and he looked at her, taken aback. “You— you knew. You knew I’d forget my handkerchief, that’s why you asked to borrow this the day before yesterday.”

She dipped her head in agreement. “Mine’s right here,” she said, and she pulled the corner of a clean square of cloth out of the front of her shirt before tucking it back into her sports bra.

She could feel the dwarves staring at her, and she fixed her gaze pointedly on the back of her horse’s neck. She could already tell that her thighs would be bruised to kingdom come by the end of the day, and she shifted uncomfortably on its back as Gandalf began to speak. “Your pocket handkerchief may have been graciously supplied to you,” Gandalf began slowly, “but you will have to manage without a great many other things, Bilbo Baggins, before we reach our journey’s end. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire. But home is now behind you. The world is ahead.”

Bilbo nodded silently, processing that bit of information. The wizard continued, addressing Leah this time. “And I do not know much, if anything, about the place that you were born to, but I suspect that home has been behind you for quite some time.”

Leah tilted her head sideways in acknowledgement, but offered no further information. She could feel the Company’s curiosity pique at the mentions of her origins. Not that she was going to tell them anything. Even Bilbo had tried to pry answers out of her, but she had decided firmly against telling anyone other than maybe Gandalf about Earth. It was too risky to talk about. It might endanger the plot or something. Space-time continuum? She didn’t want to think about it. Theoretical physics had always given her a headache, and she preferred the much more tactile science of biology.

They started moving again, and Bilbo broke the silence from beside her. “How long, exactly, have you known? About all of this?”

She sighed. Leah had been expecting this conversation, but had by no means been looking forward to it. “Since I got my memories back. The week before your birthday.”

The hobbit looked at her, aghast. “You’ve known this was coming since September?”

“I mean, technically I’ve known for over a decade,” she remarked absently, still looking at the back of her horse’s head as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

Speaking of the horse, she needed to name it. Sure, she’d only have it until the night of the trolls, but it didn’t feel quite right not to give it a name. She was pulled out of her train of thought by Bilbo, who was trying to get her attention. “Leah,” he said insistently.

“Hmm? Yes. That’s me.” she responded, blinking as she looked up.

“I know it’s you,” he said, exasperated. “What I don’t know, however, is why you didn’t say something sooner. About all of this.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “What could I have said that wouldn’t have caused you to kick me out? If not because I was disturbing the peace or something, you would’ve thought I was crazy. Had me locked up in an asylum or something.”

“Esylim?” he asked, the word unfamiliar on his tongue.

“Okay, so maybe you don’t have those here. But my point stands. You wouldn’t have reacted well, whatever your reaction may have been. Bilbo, in the past year or so, the only remotely exciting that has happened to you was finding me passed out in your garden.”

The hobbit muttered something about his strawberries, and how she was more trouble than she was worth, but Leah could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it. “I already apologized for flattening your strawberries,” she reminded him in pretend offense. “Probably close to a hundred times.”

Bilbo nodded. “You have,” he allowed. “But what kind of Baggins would I be if I didn’t have something to complain about?”

“Fair enough,” she said with a fond laugh.

“And you wonder why we thought the two of you married,” came a good-natured voice from behind her.

It was Balin. Leah tugged on the reins to slow her horse and fall back. “Do dwarves just not have friends?” she asked, joking.

Balin let out a chuckle. “Occasionally, though not often,” he returned, and she could see the playful glint in his eyes. “But the two of you bicker like an old married couple.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I do that with all of my friends. Besides, I’m—” she stopped herself, realizing what she had just been about to say.

 _Bi with a heavy lean towards women_ , she had almost told him. “You’re what?” Balin inquired politely.

She swallowed. “Nothing. It’s not important.”

She hunched her shoulders and steered her pony off to the side a little, making it clear that she considered their conversation over. Probably a little rude, but she didn’t trust herself to keep talking without letting something slip. There was a bitter taste in her mouth, and she could feel the cold sweat that had cropped up on her forehead. She had almost just outed herself to a group of heavily armed medieval warriors. There was pretty much no way that would’ve ended up well.

At home, she’d lived in a fairly liberal area, and gone to a fairly liberal high school and college. Openly gay or bi people were uncommon, but not hated outright. Leah had come out as bi when she was 16, and nobody really made a big deal of it. Yeah, there had been the occasional biphobic sentiments, like people who didn’t want to date her because they were scared she’d cheat on them with the other gender. Things like that and the ‘pick a side’ comments stung, but she’d never really been the victim of a hate crime or anything for her sexuality.

Leah knew these dwarves like the back of her hand. She knew their stories inside and out. They were good, kind people, and loyal to a fault. But Tolkien’s writings had never dealt with same-sex couples, and he was a devout Catholic in pre-World War II America — there was pretty much no chance that he _wasn’t_ homophobic. If he had decided to include gay people in Middle Earth, there was a large chance he would’ve just blamed Morgoth for their existence.

The point was that Tolkien’s highly probable homophobia could’ve easily spilled over to the inhabitants of his writings. Leah had never felt truly unsafe in her identity until this moment, and she gripped the reins until her knuckles whitened, her fingernails digging into her palms. Whatever excitement she had felt setting out to join the Company dissipated, and she was left with nothing but a sense of dread that twisted her insides into a cold, shaky knot. Not for the first or last time, Leah wished that she could just go home.


End file.
